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TRUTH TRIUMPHANT; 



MISREPRESENTATION EXPOSED 



RULE OF FAITH, 

ii* a winter evening dialogue between 
John Hardman and John Cardwele. 



Printed for the Boston Catholic Tract Society. 



BOSTON: 

SMITH & DAVIS, PRINTERS 

1829. 




4> 






ON THE 
RULE OF FAITH. 



LETTER I. 

A Winter Evening Dialogue between John 
Hardman and John Cardwell, or Thoughts 
on the Rule of Faith, in a Series of Let- 
ters, addressed to the Authors of" Letters to 
the Clergy of the Catholic Church , and more 
especially to the Rev. Thomas Shernburn y of 
Kirkham, in Lancashire." By John Hard- 
man. 

1. Introduction. 2. The Authors not Catholic. 3. 
Tendency of Protesting Principles. 4. General Re- 
marks on the performance. 

Kirkham, Jan. 26, 1813. 

Gentlemen, 

1. You are truly a pretty pair of brothers, 
thus to sport with the credulity of your rea- 
ders. Giving you ample credit for the appa- 
rent sincerity, and apparent piety of your 
professions, and taking you to be what you 
pretend to be, two Catholics, who, by search- 
ing the Scripture had discovered the errors 



of the Catholic doctrine, I felt an unusual 
joy, proportioned to the novelty of the cause. 
Within the limited sphere of my own observa- 
tion and memory, I have known many Pro- 
testants, who, by reading the Bible with dili- 
gence, and listening to the sermons of preach- 
ers, first of one sect, then of another, have 
become successively, Churchmen, Metho- 
dists, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and so 
forth: nay, some of my neighbours, who, like 
myself, were educated Churchmen, have been 
successively members of all these different 
Religions. But while we see daily instances 
of this experimental zeal, and daily admire 
the diligence of research, which the desire 
of solvation inspires in the breasts of Protes- 
tants of every description, it has always ap- 
peared to me a singular and unaccountable 
fact, that a Papist is never converted. He 
loves his faith with obstinate attachment ; 
and if he does ever forsake it, his motives are 
generally as obvious, as his sincerity is ques- 
tionable; and in most instances that have 
come within my knowledge, he soon becomes 
the disgrace of our communion, as he is an 
outcast or apostate from his own. This dis- 
edifying result most commonly mars the tri- 
umph of a Papist's conversion. I therefore 
learned with pleasure from your recent pub- 
lication, that the sincerity of your conversion 
was likely to redeem this scandal. I rejoic- 
ed to find that two ingenious young men, who 



had been diligently brought up in the religion 
of Popery, had, by a diligent and conscien- 
tious perusal of the Holy Bible, been blessed 
with light to discover their errors, and with 
grace to renounce them: and I praised the 
Lord, for having, by the marvellous light of 
his word, withdrawn you from the darkness 
and bondage of Popery, into the light and li- 
berty of the children of God. 

Pleased with this discovery, I read over and 
over again your book entitled, " The Claims 
of the Catholic Church to be regarded as 
the true Church of Christ, briefly investigat- 
ed; in a Series of Letters addressed to the 
Clergy of the Catholic Church, and more es- 
specially to the Rev. Thomas Sherburn, of 
Kirkham, in Lancashire." I made myself 
master of all the arguments by which you 
combat the errors of Popery. I was at the 
pains to verify, in our great Family Bible, all 
the references which you make to Scripture 
without quoting the text. Thus instructed by 
your discoveries, and emboldened by the tri- 
umph of your conversion, now, " thinks I to 
myself," I know all the weak parts of Pope- 
ry, now I can refute any Papist; I am now a 
match for Mr. Cardwell. 

Mr. Cardwell you know, is mv friend and 
neighbour. His farm lies near my own. We 
have always lived together on good terms, 
and in a mutual intercourse of friendly offi- 
ces, lie is a kind neighbour, a faithful 
I ' 



friend, an upright, sober, benevolent, and 
good man. Having been blessed with the 
advantages of a good education, he amuses 
his leisure hours with reading, and has the 
reputation of being almost as learned as a 
priest. But, notwithstanding all these good 
qualities he is a stiff Papist, and so religious 
in his way, that he has been heard to say, that 
he would not change his religion, even if the 
King would make him Lord Lieutenant of the 
county. Though Mr. Cardwell is not for- 
ward to begin disputes about religion, he is 
always ready to defend his own, when it is 
attacked. Several of our neighbours and 
some preachers have at times been silenced 
by his arguments. 

Said I to myself, I will visit my friend, 
and spend this long winter evening in his 
company. I will shew him this new pam- 
phlet; I mean your " Series of Letters," 
Sec. It will serve to introduce a discussion 
on religious topics. I have no hope of con- 
verting him; but as I love a little fun in my 
heart, and have qualified myself, by reading 
this book, to hold an argument with him, I 
will see what he has to say for himself. I 
went accordingly, and found my friend occu- 
pied with a book in his hand. Two or three 
others were lying on the table. He laid 
down his book, and received me with his 
wonted civility and kindness. After the usu- 
al compliments, and some observations on 



the badness of the times, the lateness of the 
harvest, and the extraordinary severity of the 
season, I took your book out of my pocket, 
and asked him whether he had seen it. He 
told me that he had. After the best preface 
that I could make, I asked him with a tone 
of triumph, whether he was not now convinc- 
ed that the Church of Rome was unscriptu- 
ral, erroneous, corrupt, and anti-christian; 
whether Babylon was not at last fallen, or at 
least falling, since two of the sons of the 
scarlet lady had, by the aid of their own 
reason, and the light of the Holy Scriptures, 
discovered and denounced the abominations 
of their mother? This question led us into a 
long and interesting conversation on a varie- 
ty of topics connected with your pamphlet. 
It is always gratifying to an author, to know 
what kind of reception his work meets with 
among readers of different descriptions. Of 
this conversation, therefore, it is my intention 
to give you a detail, as ample as my memory 
will enable me to give it, in this and my fol- 
lowing letters. 

2. To my first question, Mr, Cardwell re- 
plied by proposing another. With a look of 
earnestness mixed with good nature, he ask- 
ed me whether I really supposed that your 
book was the production of a Catholic pen. 
I answered without hesitation that I did: and 
that I considered your arguments against Po- 
pery as new, convincing, and unanswerable. 



I was not conscious that I was labouring un- 
der any delusion, or exciting his ridicule; but 
I flattered myself, that this bold and decisive 
tone would give me an advantage, and dis- 
concert my friend. Judge then, how great 
were my surprise and chagrin, when he re- 
plied with a smile. 

Mr. Hardman, I admire your simplicity in 
taking these writers to be Catholics. They 
are not Catholics, but Protestants, who have 
hoaxed you. They have laid a baited hook 
for the avidity of your religious prejudices, 
and I am sorry to see you among the gud- 
geons, who can swallow and digest it. If 
these authors pretend to put on the mantle of 
Catholicism, it is manifestly a suit that does 
not fit them. Their pretending to be Catho- 
lics is an obsolete and flimsy artifice, sup- 
ported, it seems, with sufficient art and abili- 
ty to impose on your credulity: but it is an 
artifice sufficiently obvious to the penetration 
of the simplest Catholic. They begin with a 
sanctimonious air of moderation and candour: 
but soon dropping the visor, and forgetting 
the assumed character which they had bor- 
rowed to serve a turn, they misrepresent our 
doctrine perpetually; they slander our church 
and vilify our persons, with all the malignity 
of vulgar scurrility. It is clear that they 
have never learned our cathechism, nor have 
been instructed in our doctrine. They know 



it only as it is disguised and caricatured 
in the misrepresentations of our enemies. 
Hence, like many other Protestant contro- 
vertists possessed of greater talents and more 
extensive learning than themselves, these 
writers combat a phantom of Popery, which 
exists only in their own misconception. I as- 
sert, and can prove my assertion by an appeal 
to their own words, that they are ignorant of 
the doctrine which they pretend to refute, and 
in reality prove that they are strangers to it. 
It is the glory of the Catholic doctrine, that 
it cannot be refuted, till it has been first mis- 
stated and misrepresented. It might appear 
harsh to accuse your friends of wilful misre- 
presentation; because it is possible they know 
no better: but it is a suspicious circumstance 
when a man begins with a lie in his mouth. 
At all events, their pretending to be Catho- 
lics is a stale device of controversial impos- 
ture. 

Here I signified my assent, and told Mr. 
Cardwell that I looked upon your book as a 
fair statement both of the Popish and Pro- 
testant doctrine: and insinuated that he was 
in danger of misrepresenting the character 
of your work. My friend continued. I re- 
peat my assertion. You have quite mistaken 
the character of your favourite pamphlet 
Its real character is, that one half of it con- 
sists of misrepresentations of your doctrine 
and practice; and the other half of mishit or- 



10 



pretation and misapplication of the Holy 
Scriptures. Look first at their statement of 
our doctrine and practice. They tell us: 
" We have, it is true, been taught what we 
should believe and what we should practise;, 
but the evidence of the former, and the wis- 
dom and propriety of the latter, have never 
been presented to our view: we are conse- 
quently unable to shew any reason why we 
believe this or practise that." p. I. They tell 
us again: that u an acquaintance with the 
doctrine of Christ and his Apostles makes no 
part of our religious education:" p. 6. that 
" with the New Testament, which contains 
all the will of Jesus Christ, we have no ac- 
quaintance, and that the generality of us are 
as ignorant of the word of Christ, as we are 
of the Alcoran." p. 46. They further assert, 
that " The faith of our church is directly op- 
posed to that of the Apostles; and that in- 
stead of making the word of Christ the only 
rule of faith and practice, in our church the 
authority of man is the standard of both." p. 
46. From such wretched premises, they draw 
this equally wretched inference; that " we 
are taught that our church has authoritative 
power to teach whatever doctrines she pleas- 
es in matters of faith." p. 8. Consistently 
with such notions respecting the principles of 
our faith, your friends proceed to delineate 
our moral conduct, and favor us with such 
precious discoveries as these. All we naugh- 



11 



ty Papists, say they, " are under the domin- 
ion of the lusts of the flesh; they have not 
found one individual among us who is not 
manifestly serving one or more of the lusts of 
the flesh: women and wine and strong drink 
are the prevailing objects of our pursuit." p. 
45, 6. These slanders are frequently repeat- 
ed, and sometimes in terms which modesty 
forbids us to cite. But enough of this. The 
passages which I have quoted, while they are 
such as a Catholic child can refute, are to me, 
and I hope to you also, sufficient evidence 
both of the ignorance and vulgarity of the au- 
thors. These erroneous principles and con- 
tracted notions are the groundword of your 
friends' boasted pamphlet. Thus beginning 
their controversial journey in the dark, they 
hurry their bewildered course o'er hill and 
dale, o'er hedge and ditch, till they fairly 
founder in the bog of scriptural misinterpre- 
tation. 

3. But how came you, Mr. Hardman, a 
churchman, to follow them in their wild ca- 
reer? You ought to know better. The drift 
of their reasoning from the letter of the Bi- 
ble is more hostile to your religion than it is 
to mine, and calls for a refutation from your 
divines, rather than from ours. The blow is 
ostensibly directed to us, but it is really aim- 
ed at you. How then, shall I account for 
your thoughtless commendation of such a 
work? I can easily account for it; but not 



12 

without disclosing a secret, which reflects lit- 
tle honour on Protestantism. Modern Protes- 
tantism, like ancient Paganism, is not one re- 
ligion, but an heterogenous compound of ma- 
ny different systems of religion, differing from 
each other as much as they differ from us, in 
their creeds, in their mode of worship, and 
their forms of church government. Though 
faith is one, as God, the author of true faith, 
is one, yet unity of faith never was found, 
and never will be found among the discordant 
sects of Protestantism. The only unity dis- 
cernible amongst you is of a base and spuri- 
ous kind; sufficiently indicative of error, but 
no mark of religious truth: for it consists in 
an united hatred to that Ancient Church, 
from which all your various sects have revolt- 
ed. For this reason the perverted education 
of the generality of Protestants teaching 
them to believe, that our religion is a wicked 
combination of every thing that is false in 
doctrine and corrupt in practice, teaches them 
also to hate it accordingly. Consistently 
with this hatred, which is the fruit of igno- 
rance, they most loudly censure what they 
least understand. Trained in these habits, 
they not only consider any thing that is No 
Popery to be good Protestanism, but resem- 
ble the Jews, who, in former times slandered 
St. Stephen, for having, as they were pleased 
to assert, u spoken blasphemous things 
against Moses and against God;" and who 



13 

justified their hatred and persecution of" that 
pestilent fellow/' St. Paul, by crying out, 
" men of Israel, help: this is the man that 
teacheth all men every where against the peo- 
ple, and the law and this place, and who 
brought the Greeks into the temple, and hath 
polluted this holy place." Actsvi. 11. — xxi. 
28. The consequences of this evil spirit are 
lamentable both to us, and to yourselves. To 
us, by rendering us apparently a just object 
of bitter hatred and religious execration, and 
teaching men to adopt in practice the bright 
thought of an original genius and a profound 
Protestant casuist, that it is unlawful to tell a 
lie against any body but a Papist. Hounds, 
harriers, and curs, forget their several ani- 
mosities, and join both in the cry and the 
chase to hunt down Popish game. To your- 
selves, by degrading faith from the dignity of 
a theological virtue, into a mere matter of 
human opinion. As the bond of unity amongst 
your various sects consists chiefly in a denial 
of Catholic tenets, for the very name of Pro- 
testant imparts this; so your faith is rather of 
the negative, than of the positive kind. It 
consists more of a strenuous denial of the fan- 
cied errors of Popery, than of a firm belief in 
those truths which God has actually revealed. 
And what is the consequence of this negative 
faith? Mark well the answer. That as faith 
by this new fashion, is made to consist in 
protesting or disbelieving, rather than in be- 



14 

lieving; he that disbelieves the most of Cath- 
olic truths is the most consistent Protestant. 
The Calvinist, accordingly, is a more consis- 
tent Protestant than the Church of England 
man; the Anabaptist a more consistent Pro- 
testant than the Calvinist; the Unitarian 
more consistent than the Anabaptist; and, 
perhaps, the Freethinker, or Infidel the most 
consistent Protestant of them all: because he 
protests against the greatest number of Cath- 
olic truths. This negative rule of faith, by 
which you all form your religion to your taste, 
just as a man chooses the colour and shape 
of his clothes, to please his fancy, autho- 
rizes and justifies every error and heresy 
which the wild imagination of men can in- 
vent; and deprives you of the means of re- 
futing any. Certainly it destroys every real 
principle of unity among you, except that 
which subsisted among the ancient heretics, 
a unity in protesting against and hating that 
original and perpetual church, by which they 
were all condemned. You indeed talk much 
about religion and the rule of faith; but you 
reason little on these important subjects. You 
quote texts of Scripture, often misapplied, of- 
ten obscure, and sometimes incomprehensi- 
ble. Provided that you fancy that they are ad- 
verse to Popery, you rest perfectly satisfied, 
that they are both well applied, and clearly in- 
telligible; whereas you shut your eyes to in- 
numerable texts, that give the clearest testi- 



15 

mony to the evidence of Catholic truth. I 
know that in your protesting or disbelieving 
system, you all pretend to follow the Holy 
Scriptures. But this is an illusion. The 
word of God misinterpreted is no longer the 
word of God. It is degraded from its rank 
and dignity, and resolved into the word of 
man. Your arbitrary interpretations of the 
sacred text, neutralize its authority, by per- 
verting its sense. Scripture is such, only in 
its true sense and meaning. 

4. But, Mr. Hardman, you not only com- 
mend this Calvinistic pamphlet, but you tell 
me, that it contains new, convincing and un- 
answerable arguments against us. My idea 
of it is pretty much the reverse. All the ar- 
guments of these new foes to Popery, which 
have any weight, have been a thousaud times 
objected by your divines, and a thousand 
times refuted by ours. I could easily show 
you the refutation of them all. It is an un- 
gracious as well as an unprofitable task, to 
prove that your authors are entitled to honour- 
able distinction in the Dunciad. But it would 
be easy to show, that their powers of argu- 
mentation are just commensurate with their 
powers of description; and that they are as 
little qualified to argue against our principles 
conclusively, as they are to state them cor- 
rectly. Their knowledge and ingenuity are 
contracted within a very limited circle. They 
favour us with a specimen of their political 



IG 



knowledge, when they condescend to inform 
us that " that power which abrogates laws is 
greater than the power which first enacted 
them, supposing the latter to be in existence." 
As if God could not abrogate the old law to 
establish the new; or, as if the legislature could 
not repeal, in one session, a law made in an- 
other. Then they have shewn some novelty 
and ingenuity in the following theological dis- 
covery: " This vaunted principle respecting 
the authority of the Church seems to our- 
selves," say they, " a sort of deifying of the 
Church: it has a tendency to wrest the scep- 
tre from his Almighty hand, and to invest her 
with the powers of Omnipotence, while the 
practical exercise of this principle, if not ac- 
tually, is nearly allied to the grossest idola- 
try." As if this newly discovered species of 
Popish idolatry, which is just as idle and vi- 
sionary as the former ones, might not be re- 
torted on themselves, by merely substituting 
the noun substantive Scripture, in the place 
of their noun substantive Church. If I allude 
to these specimens of their novelty and inge- 
nuity in argumentation, it is not with a view 
of wasting any observations to correct the 
obliquity, or dissipate the darkness of ideas, 
which they exhibit; but to show you, that 
your invincible polemics are safer when they 
stand behind the entrenchments of others, 
than when they attempt to raise any new 
ones of their own. 



th 

I 

T 



17 

You seem to think, Mr. Hardman, that be- 
cause these authors quote the Bible, and de- 
claim against Popery, they are profound di- 
vines, conclusive reasoners, and enlightened 
apologists of your parliamentary church. To 
this opinion I cannot subscribe. Their reli- 
ion differs no less from the church of Eng- 
and, than it does from the church of Rome. 
Tieir religion, Sir, like that of many others, 
who follow Protestant principles, is a clumsy 
and ill-assorted piece of scriptural patch-work, 
consisting of scriptural shreds tacked toge- 
ther, according to their own capricious taste 
and fancy, without either the justness of pro- 
portion, the beauty of symmetry, or the rule 
of truth. They set out, it is true, on the Pro* 
testant principles; but being bolder than you 
in the art of protesting, they soon leave you 
many a furlong behind them. They affirm 
that the Bible contains the whole will of Je- 
sus Christ, and the whole and sole rule of a 
Christian's faith. They affirm, as warmly as 
you do, " the Bible, I say, the Bible is the 
only religion of Protestants." We deny 
these principles. We prove them to be false, 
delusive, and enthusiastic. We are therefore 
authorized to reject the conclusions which re- 
sult from them. You churchmen admit these 
principles. They are your own. Consis- 
tency requires therefore that you should ad- 
mit the conclusions which these authors legi- 
timately draw from the premises. You are 



18 



a stout church-and-king-man, Mr. Hardman, 
and can call out, No Popery, in an ale-house, 
or at a vestry-meeting, as loudly as any in- 
habitant of our parish. Now let me point to 
your reflection one specimen of the reasoning 
of these authors, in a case which comes home 
to your own feelings; a case which clearly de- 
cides either that your principles are false, or 
your church is erroneous. It will not only 
change your opinion as to the merits and or- 
thodoxy of these authors, whom your aversion 
to our religion has taught you blindly to com- 
mend: but will at once shew you how the Bi- 
ble may be abused by wanton interpretation; 
and how inadequately your own favourite Pro- 
testant Church of England can defend itself, 
by Scripture alone, against the arbitrary con- 
struction of mere Bible-men. These authors 
take up the Bible: they read it: and what 
does their contracted and vulgar cast of mind 
discover? That the Church should be with- 
out a clergy, a flock without pastors, save 
such as are of a Presbyterian description. 
What, you will say, are there to be no Pro- 
testant deacons, priests, vicars, rectors, deans, 
archdeacons, bishops, archbishops, with a 
king at their head, the Defender of the Faith ? 
No. The independency of their ideas and 
presbyterian optics can discover none of this 
Popish trumpery in the Scripture. They tell 
you, that all such authority is an usurpation 
of the prerogatives of Christ ! In the New 



19 



Testament they can discover nothing but the 
laity and Office-bearers. They say, "the lai- 
ty consitute the Church, and teachers and 
pastors are its office-bearers." p. 15. I must 
remark that they have not pointed out either 
the chapter or the verse where this phraseol- 
ogy occurs in the Bible. Following your 
own authorized version, they find that a bish- 
op is but an overseer , (Acts xx. 28*;) a priest 

* The present authorised English version of the Bible 
still retains a leaven of the Calvinistic spirit, which 
Foreign and British reformers imported from Geneva, and 
which they copiously infused into the travesty English 
translations commonly used in the reigns of Edward VI. 
and Elizabeth. But as the English version stands at pre- 
sent, this spirit is perhaps no where more apparent, than 
in the translation of the Acts of the Apostles, particular- 
ly chap. xx. v. 28. Instead of translating this most im- 
portant passage, as it is correctly translated in the Latin 
Vulgate, and the English Catholic Testament; "Take 
heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the 
Holy Ghost hath placed you Bishops to rule the church 
of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood;" 
it has contrived to mutilate the sense and degrade the ex- 
pression to a degree scarcely exampled in any grave trans- 
< other languages, thus: the Holy Ghost hath 
>ver 4 reed, &c. I shall not stop to prove 
el 't, that though the metaphor 

f primitive manners and 
est sense, means to feed, 
when it is applied by 
the sacred rist, or as in this place, 

to Bishops, and when it by profane writers to 

kings, as it is by Homer to Agamemnon, (Iliad B. 11. v. 
85.) the verb feed does not express one half of its mean 
a 



20 



is but an elder; (Acts xiv. 23. — xv. 4;) a dea- 
con but a. servant, (Acts vi. 2.) As to an Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, a Bishop of Chester, a 
Dean of Peterborough, a Prebendary of 
Westminister, or Durham, a Vicar, or Curate 

ing. The word overseer is duly qualified to keep com- 
pany with its degraded associate, feed. The lowest de- 
gradation to which ingenuity can possibly reduce the 
etymon Ejr/a-xoTc?, may be inspector, superintendant, 
looker-on, over-looker, supervisor, or overseer. But 
does this express half the meaning of the term ? As well 
might we say that the overseer or supervisor of Durham, 
is the Bishop of Durham; and with equal propriety might 
we translate, Christus Pontifex noster, Christ our Bridge- 
builder, instead of Christ our High Priest. Much more 
than an overseer is implied in the venerable term which 
has been religiously incorporated into the language of al- 
most every Christian nation. No pedigree in the He- 
rald's Office is more honuorable or authentic than the ety- 
mology of the English word Bishop: in the original 
Greek, Ecr/$-xo7roc; in latin, Episcopus; in Italian, Yes- 
covo: in French, Eveque; in Spanish, Obispo; in Ger- 
man, Bischofi: in Dutch, Bischop; in Anglo-Saxon, 
Bipceop; in English, Bishop. If the English Protestant 
translators of the Bible, in Acts xx. 28. overlooked the 
English word Bishop, which never had more than one 
exclusive meaning, and have degraded the first officer of 
the church into the lowest underling of a parish, it is not 
from accident but design. Perhaps they intended it as 
a compliment to the Overseers of Nag's Head me- 
mory. Certain it is, such translating is not the word of 
God. Mr. Nolan has ably vindicated the authenticity of 
the Vulgate in this verse, as well as in the first Epistle of 
St. John, ch. v. v. 7. from the scepticism of Griesbach 
and other nibbling critics. 



21 



of Kirkham; all these institutions are but 
the filthy rags of Babylon. These institu- 
tions, say they, changing the word Popish for 
Protestant, are all unscriptural, all an usurp- 
ation of Christ's sole and exclusive priesthood. 
" The application of Scripture to such author- 
ity," they further tell you, " is such a mani- 
fest wresting of the words of Christ, that they 
find some difficulty in resisting the conviction 
that your church has wilfully perverted the 
Sacred Scriptures, to support her claims to 
such authority. Their argument stands thus: 
" The Apostles justly considered that the 
words of Christ, " All power is given to me," 
peremptorily excluded all separate, or conjunct 
authority. How then shall we reconcile the 
claims of your church in matters of authority, 
(even your Protestant church, consisting of a 
regal head with bishops, priests, &c.) with 
the offices of Jesus Christ? Her pretensions 
to such authority appear to us be an usur- 
pation of the prerogatives of the Saviour. — 
All authority in matters of religion, except 
that of Christ, is strange to his people. He 
is the alone Prophet and King in the Church 
of God." Our divines are apt to smile, and 
yours to writhe at these levelling arguments 
of John Calvin. 

Now, Mr. Hardman, I beg leave to observe 
that if this mode of reasoning, from the bare 
letter of the Scripture, be formidable and un- 
answerable, it is only so to you, and your 



22 

church authority, not to ours. We stand on 
more solid ground. This very spirit of your 
authors, among the Puritans, Presbyterians, 
and Independents, of former times, employed 
the same process of the Bible alone interpre- 
ted by fanaticism, both to overturn your 
church, to destroy the monarchy, and to de- 
luge England with blood. They justified 
their rebellion by proclaiming no authority 
but the authority of Christ; no priest but 
priest Jesus; no king but king Jesus. To 
the Bible alone, as interpreted by themselves, 
they appealed both to justify their wicked- 
ness, and to sanction their atrocities. Our 
reverence for the Bible condemns such a fla- 
grant abuse of the Holy Books, whether it 
proceed from an ancient Puritan, or from the 
modern Praise-God-Barebones, who have 
written this new, convincing and unanswer- 
able pamphlet. If I did not feel an invinci- 
ble repugnance to imitate your authors, in 
wantonly perverting the meaning and profa- 
ning the sanctity of the Bible, I could prove 
from express texts, that you are religiously 
obliged to wear only one coat; and that when 
you leave my fire-side, and return home, this 
cold, stormy winter evening, you ought to 
leave both your great coat and your pockets 
behind. The puritanical pamphlet which 
you so inconsiderately commend, without per- 
ceiving its tendency, is a tissue of confident 
ignorance, of coarse vulgarity, and blind en- 



23 



thusiasm. It has not convinced me of one 
error in the Catholic faith: but it has strength- 
ened my conviction, that the Protestant Rule 
of Faith canot lead men to the unity of 
truth: but only into a multiplied variety of 
errors. 

I shall resume the subject of our conver- 
sation in my next letter. In the mean time, 
I am, &c. John Hardman. 



ANECDOTE. 

Few persons are perhaps acquainted with 
the following anecdote of the late father of 
the faithful, Pope Pius VI., whose family 
name was Braschi. The circumstance hap- 
pened in his youth, while he was engaged in 
the prosecution of his studies in the city of 
Cesena. It is thus related by an intimate 
friend of his, who was at the same time a 
fellow-student. "One evening we were taking 
our walk, when, on drawing near to a poor 
cottage, we were alarmed at the cries of dis- 
tress that proceeded from it. Young Braschi, 
in the first moments of terror, felt inclined to 
make the best of his way from the place, but 
recovering himself, and repenting of his weak- 
ness, he advanced by himself to the door of 
the house from which the moans were heard, 
and I followed him. We knocked at the 
door; a woman excessively pale and thin 



24 

opened it for us, and asked what we wanted. 
" I heard," saidBraschi, " some doleful cries 
from your house, and feared that some one of 
its inmates might be dangerously ill." " No," 
replied the woman, " but we are truly mise- 
rable. Those deep moans which you heard 
were my daughter's: her husband is in pris- 
on for debt; she is come here with four small 
children, without any means of setting her 
husband at liberty, or of providing for the 
support of her little ones, for whom we have 
not a single mouthful of bread for their sup- 
per." When their bed time came it was a 
heart-rending scene to hear their cries of 
hunger, and to witness the sad distress of 
their mother. "Alas!" said I to the good 
woman, as I took a small piece of money from 
my pocket and laid it on the table, " Scholars 
are not very rich, but rest assured that these 
little ones shall not want a meal in the morn- 
ing." She thanked me with the most lively 
emotions of gratitude. — I was astonished that 
Braschi, with whose charitable dispositions I 
was well acquainted, gave nothing; I suppos- 
ed, however, that he had no money with him. 
He merely asked what was the sum for which 
her son-in-law had been arrested. " For 
three hundred florins," replied the poor wo- 
man, " a sum too great for us to hope ever 
to have it in our power to raise in his favour." 
She then burst into tears. " Console your- 
self," said Braschi, " God never abandons 



25 



us; he provides resources when we least ex- 
pect them." We then took our departure. 
I felt very desirous to enter into a conversa- 
tion respecting the poor objects we had seen, 
but Braschi scarcely noticed my observations; 
he seemed to be entirely occupied with some 
idea that absorbed his attention. — I did not 
disturb his reflections; and we entered the 
city without any interchange of our ideas. 
The day following was a holiday; Braschi 
rose before day-light, and looked out for a 
a purchaser of his cabinet of natural history. 
Having got the price he wished for, he con- 
cluded a bargain, without my knowing it, for 
six hundred florins. As soon as he received 
the money he flew to the cottage, and in a 
low tone of voice called the good woman, who 
came to the door, and asked the purport of 
his coming. " I am come," said he, " to 
save life, and to give liberty to your son-in- 
law;" and, as he said this, he laid down a 
purse with the six hundred florins and with- 
drew in haste. The old mother overwhelmed 
almost with joy and surprise, called her daugh- 
ter, and shewed her the purse. The trifle 
which I had given her the evening before, for 
the purpose of procuring a morsel of bread 
for the children, had penetrated the poor 
mother with sentiments of gratitude; the large 
sum offered by a person or Braschi's age and 
not think of abusing the goodness of heart of 
this amiable youth, by applying to our own 
use so considerable a sum, which must ecr- 



26 



appearance, excited her suspicion. "I think," 
said she to her aged parent, " it will be bet- 
ter for us not to touch this money; the youth 
has perhaps been moved by our distress to 
dispose of this sum without the knowledge, or 
consent of his parents, and it would be an 
unpardonable abuse of confidence. Let us 
carefully lock up this purse, and then, if we 
are asked for it, we can give it back again." 
Two days passed from the time of our visit, 
during which we received our monthly allow- 
ance of pocket money. I did not forget the 
poor objects at the cottage, but carried a 
small part of the sum I had received for their 
relief. Like my friend, I had it not in my 
power to sacrifice all that I could have wish- 
ed for the service of these unfortunate crea- 
tures; but how far did I find myself behind 
my illustrious rival in charity, when, on my 
arrival at the hut, the two women and chil- 
dren surrounded me, and before I had time to 
present them with my mite, asked me if I 
knew the young man who had visited them at 
the same time with myself. " Know him;" 
cried I, "yes; he is my best and most inti- 
mate friend." "Well," said the young wo- 
man, as she unlocked a box to take out the 
purse, " I beg you will take back this mon- 
ey either to him, or his parents; for we can- 
tainly have been destined for some other 
purpose." My astonishment was extreme; 
but it soon gave way to admiration. I had 
previously noticed the motives of Braschi; 



27 

I had observed a man carrying away some 
cases from his apartments, but had no idea 
what they were. I should never have imag- 
ined that he, whose only delight was his cab- 
inet, and who had constantly sacrificed to 
that object the money allowed him by his pa- 
rents, could part with it for the purpose of 
rescuing from prison an entire stranger. 
Now, however, I felt satisfied that such was 
the fact. I therefore told the good people to 
banish all uneasiness, assuring them that the 
money was entirely at my friend's disposal, 
and was the fruit of his own economy and 
care. — " Ah!" said the young woman, " if I 
could but believe what you tell me, I should 
indeed be happy; but should reproach myself 
for having suffered my husband to languish 
two days longer in prison than I need have 
done " I replied, " If you doubt my word, 
come with me to the college, and there in- 
quire by what means John Braschi became 
possessed of that sum of money." — " No, 
sir," said she, " that is not necessary; I will 
lose no time in putting the money of my bene- 
factor to its proper use, in setting at liberty 
my poor husband, and restoring life to his 
almost perishing family. I offered to accom- 
pany her to the prison; wc found there her 
husband, an old soldier, covered with hon- 
ourable scars. The want of integrity, and 
the disloyalty of one of bis comrades, for 
whom he had given bond, had brought him to 
his wretched state of misfortune, which he 



28 



bore with heroic resignation. But when he 
was told that an angel of charity was now 
restoring him to his family, his fortitude seem- 
ed to abandon him. Better able to support 
adversity than prosperity, at the news of his 
good fortune, he grew pale, and sunk down 
almost lifeless. Being supported for a time 
by his wife, he recovered, and gave himself 
up to joy and gratitude. On approaching the 
college, I cried out to my friend, as soon as 
I perceived him at a distance, " Braschi, 
Braschi, I have met with some amateurs who 
are desirous to view your cabinet of natural 
history." " It is not in proper order at pres- 
ent," he replied, "I cannot shew it." "Well," 
said I, " but you will not refuse a sight of it, 
as it is to the poor inhabitants of the cot- 
tage." " O heavens!" he exclaimed " I am 
betrayed!" I then related to him the man- 
ner in which my parsimonious alms had led 
to the discovery of his noble deed of charity, 
which he had endeavoured to conceal with as 
much care as another would employ to hide 
some grievous fault. For my own part, I 
took as much delight as the poor people did 
to publish what he strove to conceal. The 
friends of Braschi congratulated his parents 
on their having a son endowed with such rare 
dispositions, and said as the jews did respect- 
ing the precursor of our Lord, St. John the 
baptist, "What manner of man, think you, 
will this child be ? 



£9 

COMMUNICATED. 

ODE TO THE CLOSING YEAR. 

Oh! why should I attempt to ring 

The knell of Time in sorrowing tone, 
Or sadly tune my Lyre to sing 

A Requiem o'er the year that's gone? — 
It has not been to me so bright 

That I should mourn it's timely end, 
Or sit me down in grief to write 

Farewell to a departed friend! — 
And if 'twould tarry now with me, 

I should in sooth be apt to say, 
Pass on! I've had too much of thee, 

To thank thee for an hour's delay! 

Thy course was marked, dark closing year, 
By many a sigh and bitter tear; 

By promised joys too long delayed, 
By hopes that only bloomed to fade, 
By all that steals the cheek's warm glow 
And loads the heart with silent wo, 
Damps the gay plumes of Fancy's wing, 
And nips her blossoms 'ere they spring — 
And turns the lightsome lay of gladness, 
E'en in its flow to strains of sadness, 
And shades with clouds of care and fear 
The promise of another year. — 



tt 1 " 1 



sooooos 

sooooos 

sooooos 

sooooos 
j-i. sooooos 

iissssssssssssssssssooooossssssssssssssssss^j: 
tj:sooooooooo the holy cross, oooooooos: 

If 



sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 
sooooos 

•> M M M I - 

■1 i 1 H H 1 



ON THE 
RULE Or FAITH. 



LETTER II. 

JL Winter Evening Dialogue between John 
Hardman and John Cardwell, or Thoughts 
on the Rule of Faith, in a Series of Let- 
ters, &LC. &C. &C. 

1. The Catholic Faith not Changeable — but Fixed. 2. 
Reformed Faith not fixed — but changeable. 

Kirkham, Jan. 26, 1813. 
Gentlemen, 

1. Though these general observations of 
Mr. Cardwell, on the nature, the character, 
and tendency of your " Letters to the Clergy 
of the Catholic Church," had not struck my 
mind before, I could not in the secret of my 
own breast, help admitting the justice aud 
propriety of his remarks. I felt rather mor- 
tified that my friend had discovered the anar- 
chical principles and spirit of the presbyterian 
levelling of your pamphlet, which though ob- 
vious when pointed out, had hitherto been in- 
visible to me. Neither was I much gratified 



with his remarks on the protesting principle 
as a criterion of truth. I was sensible that 
the terms protesting, or protestantism, do not 
occur in the Scriptures, our only Rule of 
Faith; and I now saw evidently that though 
both you and I are Protestants, your religion 
differs from mine, as much as mine does from 
Popery. But smothering the chagrin and 
disappointment which I felt at the turn which 
our conversation had taken, and apprehensive 
lest Mr. Cardwell should divert me from my 
intended attack on the corruptions of his 
church, and put me on the defence of my own, 
I here begged leave to interrupt him. Well, 
said I, whoever the authors of this pamphlet 
may be, whether wavering Papists, or Pro- 
testants in disguise, is a matter of little conse- 
quence: but one thing you must admit; that 
they have fully exposed the pretended autho- 
rity of your church to teach whatever doc- 
trines she pleases as matters of faith; and 
have demonstrably proved that this leading 
principle of Popery, which caused and justi- 
fied the Reformation, is repugnant to Scrip- 
ture, and blasphemous to the Almighty. 

Hold, said Mr. Cardwell, I am happy to 
agree with you that such a principle is equal- 
ly absurd and impious: but that principle is 
not ours. Our church claims no such power; 
she pretends to no such authority; she never 
pretended to exercise it. It is an assertion 
which would not be tolerated in any Catholic 



writer. On the contrary, it would certainly 
be condemned as heretical. Our faith is no 
secret: it is not hidden under a bushel. We 
clearly profess and openly avow our religious 
principles in the face of the universe. A 
child may learn them in a few days, — a culti- 
vated understanding in a few hours. Now^ 
Mr. Hardman, let me request your attention. 
The faith of the Catholic Church is not arbi- 
trary, but fixed; not changeable and reforma- 
ble at the pleasure of man: but originally de- 
livered to the Church, in unchangeable per- 
fection, by the positive revelation of God. It 
is in our estimation unlawful, and a criminal 
act of pride and presumption, for man to 
change what God has declared unchangea- 
ble; or, in other words, to reform what God 
has made perfect. Therefore it is, and it has 
always been, the steady principle and prac- 
tice of our Church to resist all innovation, 
all attempts to improve the original deposite 
of Divine Revelation; and to contend earnest- 
ly for that faith, and that only which was ori- 
ginally delivered to the Saints. Jude iii. By 
a constant adherence to this rule, our faith is 
transmitted uniform and unchanged from ge- 
neration to generation. David, and Isaiah 
said, u the truth of the Lord cndureth for- 
ever." Psalm, cxvi. Is. xl. 8. Our blessed 
Saviour announced, with awful solemnity, 
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
words shall not pass away." Matt. xxiv. 35. 



His Apostle, St. Paul declared: "Though 
we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach any 
other gospel unto you, than that we have 
preached, .... than that ye have received, let 
him be anathema," (Gal. 1. 8.) declaring the 
Church to be " the pillar and ground of 
truth;" (1 Tim. iii.) terms by no means em- 
blematical of instability, or change. So we 
freely admit, that we have neither the right 
nor the authority to make any change in the 
faith, which we have received, knowing from 
whom we have received it; much less to be- 
lieve, or teach what we please. Our religion 
is not like a disputable and improvable sys- 
tem of philosophy: it is not a matter of spe- 
culation, but of fact. What God has gra- 
ciously condescended to reveal, and Jesus 
Christ has taught, is the measure and rule of 
our faith. Where the doctrine of Jesus Christ 
is in question, we deem addition, or retrench- 
ment equally criminal. To this doctrine, in 
its full extent, as understood by the wise, the 
learned, the great, and the good, in every 
age of the Christian Church, we adhere, and 
by this we abide. This faith is a bond of 
unity, which links us with the Holy Catholic 
Church, subsisting in all ages, teaching all 
nations, and maintaining all the truths of di- 
vine revelation. 

What a striking contrast! While the va- 
rious and countless sects of Protestantism 
are ever wavering and unsettled in faith; dif- 



fering from all others, and dissatisfied with 
themselves; always seeking, or pretending to 
seek, and yet never coming to the truth; it is 
a singular fact, and beautiful as it is singular, 
that the Catholics all profess, and are all hap- 
py and satisfied, both in mind and conscience, 
with professing one and the same faith. 
Though our numbers are beyond the power 
of calculation; though, speaking collectively, 
we have lived in ages the most distant from 
each other; though we inhabit climates the 
most opposite, and countries the most remote; 
though we differ in language, in manners and 
customs, in national prejudices and forms of 
civil government, and in almost every thing 
else; yet in this one point we all agree. Unit- 
ed in the profession of the same faith, we all 
form but one family in Jesus Christ. I am 
not declaiming, but stating a fact. What our 
virtuous and eloquent Pastor, Mr. Sherburn, 
teaches in our chapel, as essential to faith, is 
taught as such by all his Apostolic brethren. 
He is under his own Bishop, in communion 
with them. Our Bishop, united with his cler- 
gy, is under that Supreme Authority which 
Christ established, in communion with all the 
Bishops and Clergy of the Catholic world. 
In Europe and Asia, in Africa and America, 
we form but one, body, animated by one spi- 
rit, and united in one belief. Hut further 
Still: This beauty of Catholic unity is not pe- 
culiar to the present age. Our faith IS the 



6 



faith of the ages that are past — the faith of 
the Fathers in the Council of Trent — the faith 
which St. Augustine preached to our Pagan 
Ancestors — the faith which was professed in 
the Council of Nice — the faith which was 
preached by the Apostles of Christ, and by 
them delivered to their successors, to be 
transmitted with religious reverence to all 
succeeding generations. Not the smallest 
variation in matters of faith is discernible 
among the uncountable millions " of all ages 
and nations, and tribes, and people, and 
tongues," who profess, or have professed the 
Catholic belief. Walking steadfastly in this 
way of unity, no doubts distract our minds, 
no terrors distress our consciences about the 
truth of our religion. Satisfied that our 
Church, and no other, follows the perfect 
rule of truth, our only solicitude in matters 
of religion, consists in our doubts and fears, 
whether we live up to the sanctity of our 
profession; and whether the purity of our 
lives be answerable to the integrity of our 
faith. And as our faith is not insular, but 
catholic; as it is a positive, not a negative 
thing, and consists in believing, not in pro- 
testing; so we are the very reverse of you. 
You adopt new fashions in religion; we 
cling with affectionate and reverential at- 
tachment to the old. You love to make ex- 
periments, and are pleased with new in- 
ventions; we, considering that truth in these 



matters is more ancient than falsehood, re- 
ject your experiments in religion, and con- 
sider all your new inventions, at best, as sus- 
picious. Hence you may have observed the 
fact, but perhaps without considering the 
cause, that we are as fixed in religion as you 
are unsettled; because we have found that 
peace and comfort, which by the wise or- 
dinance of Providence, are, in the by-ways 
of error, commonly sought in vain. 

You see then clearly, Mr. Hardman, how 
the matter stands. So far from claiming the 
authority of teaching whatever doctrines she 
pleases, as matters of faith, our Church can- 
not, without swerving from her most essential 
principles, make any alteration in the faith, 
which she first received from its authentic 
source, and has religiously preserved pure 
from all human mixture. She is the faithful 
witness and guardian, not the inventor of the 
truth All that she pretends to is to testify 
and declare what is the faith, which has flow- 
ed to her by a clear snd uninterrupted stream 
of tradition, from this pure source. Taking 
the Catholic Church therefore, abstractly, as 
the most ancient, incomparably the most 
numerous, and for piety and learning the 
most illustrions society of Christians, pro- 
fessing to adhere to the faith delivered, and to 
reject all innovations as profane; it is moral- 
ly impossible that she should ever be capable 
3 



a 



of departing from the faith originally re- 
vealed by Christ, and preached by his Apos- 
tles. That individuals should depart from 
the faith, and introduce " damnable heresies 
and sects of perdition," it is natural to ex- 
pect. This is only what Christ foretold. This 
is what the Apostles themselves had the af- 
fliction to behold. This is what the church 
which they established, and which they com- 
manded us to hear, has witnessed in every 
succeeding age, and in none more visibly 
than in the present. But for the Universal 
Church to deviate from the faith, requires the 
consent of so many millions, the revulsion 
and laceration of so many fixed principles 
of belief, that such an alteration, I repeat it, 
is morally impossible. But admitting the 
inspiration and authenticity of the Holy 
Scriptures; admitting that the Church and 
the Pastoral charge of the church are the 
work of Divine Institution, and that faith 
cometh by hearing; if we proceed a step 
further, and consider the Catholic Church as 
that Society which was instituted by Christ, 
formed by his Apostles, instructed by his 
word, supported by the promise of his per- 
petual aid, and ever guided by the unerring 
influence of the Spirit of Truth, the impos- 
sibility of its altering the original deposit of 
Divine Faith, is fully established to the satis- 
faction of our minds. Our faith therefore is 



V) 



not built on the sandy foundation of human 
judgment and deceitful speculation; but on 
the solid rock of divine authority and unal- 
terable truth. Our firm conviction of this 
truth is the real cause of a fact which must 
often have attracted your notice and excited 
your surprise; that a well-instructed Catho- 
lic is never found either unsettled in religion, 
or wavering in faith. He makes no changes 
in his religious creed; because he knows that 
every change is for the worse. 

Much has been said, and much has been 
written by Catholic divines, on this very in- 
teresting and very pleasing subject. Their 
judgment, their learning, and their eloquence, 
have dispersed the mists of hoary time; and 
have invested this long chain of Catholic 
tradition with an unequalled blaze of evi- 
dence. I refer you to them, and only skim 
the surface of the subject. There are two 
ways of proving that the faith of the Catholic 
Church remains unchanged. The first is 
arguing a priori, as I have done, by shewing 
from the nature of the Church and the rule 
of its profession, that a change is improba- 
ble, if not impossible. The second way is 
arguing analytic ally. In this way we take 
each separate tenet as it is now actually pro- 
fessed by us, and controverted by you; for 
instance, the Supremacy of the Pope, the 
Real Presence, Prayers for the Dead, the In- 



10 

vocation of Saints, Confession of Sins, and 
so of the rest. We compare our belief re- 
specting this individual tenet, with what was 
believed in the age which preceded us; with 
the faith which prevailed in the five, ten, fif- 
teen ages which preceded that; we compare 
it with the definitions of past Councils, and 
the doctrine of the primitive Fathers; we 
compare it with the confessions of ancient, 
and the concession of modern Heretics; with 
the language of the ancient Liturgies, the 
significancy of ancient ceremonies and re- 
ligious customs; and through this correct 
medium, trace its identity to the very time of 
the Apostles and of Christ. Either way leads 
to the most satisfactory result, and conducts 
the sincere inquirer to the discovery of the 
truth. I shall only observe that Challoner, 
Hay, Des 3Iahis, Harwarden, and Manning, 
have generally adopted the former method. 
Gother in his JrVubes Ttstiunu and more at 
large, 3Ir. Berrington, in his recent and 
elaborate publication, Thi Faith of Catholics 
proved from Scripture, and attested by Tra- 
dition* a work which acutely examines and 
cross-examines the evidence, and with great 
impartiality exhibits the faith of the Greek, 
Latin, and Oriental Fathers and Councils, 
of the first four centuries, have followed the 
latter. Bossuet in his Treatises, and his His- 
tory of the Variations of the Protestant 



11 

Churches, Mr. Fletcher in his unrivalled Ser- 
mons on the four Marks of the Church, and 
Mr. Lingard in his elegant tracts in the Dur- 
ham Controversy, to pass over many other 
writers of sterling value, have formed a hap- 
py combination of both these methods of 
demonstration. All together have proved 
satisfactorily the sameness of our faith with 
that of all preceding ages, and have placed 
the unchangedness and unchangeableness of 
our faith, on every controverted point, in the 
clearest and most satisfactory light. These 
able combatants have employed the same 
weapons for the purpose of aggression as 
well as self defence. They have shewn, a 
priori, that the peculiar doctrines of what is 
called the Reformation, are false, because 
they are new. They have also shewn it in 
detail, by demonstrating that in point of faith, 
in which you differ from us, you vary, in an 
equal degree,, from the venerable antiquity of 
Apostolic truth. You will excuse me from 
entering further, at present, into this exten- 
sive field. If you wish to proceed further 
into it, for your own satisfaction, I have point- 
ed out the way, and furnished you with safe 
guides. 

That pamphlet of a Presbyterian Elder, 
which you have brought in your pocket, has 
extorted these observations from me. I hope 
they have proved to your satisfaction, that 



12 

we Catholics are not such fools as he would 
teach you to believe; and that your zealous 
Elder is either ignorant of the doctrine which 
he attempts to refute, or guilty of contempti- 
ble slander, when he asserts that " the Cath- 
olic Church claims authority to teach her 
Children to believe what she pleases as mat- 
ters of faith," or that we can give no reason, 
(to use his own elegant expression,) u why 
we believe this or practise that." 

I deem these remarks sufficient to prove 
that the Catholic faith is not a changeable 
system of belief. I might confirm the same 
truth by an appeal to a great variety of the 
clearest and most important passages of the 
New Testament; to the intentions, designs, 
and promises of Christ; to the sentiments, 
instructions, and actions of the Apostles. I 
might bring forward a body of evidence to 
prove the same position from the considera- 
tion of Christ's Institution of the Sacred 
Ministry, the perpetuity of its Holy Orders, 
and lawfulness of its mission. All these con- 
siderations, in which a Catholic Divine is 
peculiarly and exclusively at home, furnish 
clear evidence of the immutability of Catho- 
lic truth. But as hundreds of our divines 
have both satisfactorily established these 
ground-works of our faith, and successfully 
repelled all the attacks of their enemies, I 
forbear to prolong the discussion. 



13 



2. I have only one more observation to 
recommend to your notice on this subject. 
It ill becomes the children of what you call 
the Reformation, to accuse us of the laxity 
of believing what we please. You charge us 
with this absurd principle, in contradiction 
both to our own professions and positive 
matter of fact, and yet, at every step, you 
assert this privilege yourselves, and pursue 
it into all the ramifications of error. With- 
out the exereise of this principle of believing 
what you please, both your ancestors and 
yourselves would have continued to this day 
in the Communion of the Catholic Church, 
and the Reformation would never have ex- 
isted. This was the origin, the principle, 
the motive, the very soul of your Reforma- 
tion. I have already observed that ours is 
an old religion, and has an attachment for 
the good old fashions. With us, whose faith 
is fixed, improvement or alteration, reforma- 
tion or corruption of the faith means the same 
thing. In our vocabulary, they are synoni- 
mous terms. We care not what choice of 
expressions ingenuity may employ to cover a 
deviation from the One, Holy, Catholic and 
Apostolic Faith of our most ancient original 
Church. We Eire not misled by the name. 
We look to the thing. Men may employ the 
pompous term of Reformation to conceal 
their innovations in faith, just as revolution- 



14 



ists perpetrate the blackest horrors under the 
specious name of liberty. In either case we 
see the delusion, and detest the crime. 

There are two kinds of Reformation indi- 
cated in the Holy Scripture — a reformation 
of morals, and a reformation of the faith. 
The first is enjoined as an indispensable duty: 
the second foretold, but condemned as a se- 
rious evil. I shall not quote a multitude of 
texts to shew this. But I am convinced, that 
if your Reformers had employed themselves 
in the first kind of reformation, they would 
have found work enough, without attempting 
the second. If they had reformed their own 
pride and ambition, their own sensual pas- 
sions and shameful lust, they never would 
have laid their sacrilegious hands on the sa- 
cred Ark of Faith. The reformation of faith 
is not a modern invention. It was begun by 
11 men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning 
the faith" in the Apostolic age; and the un- 
hallowed work has been continued in all suc- 
ceeding times, by men who rejected the rule 
of Catholic unity, and asserted the privilege 
of believing what they pleased. Thus in the 
first age of the Christian Church, Ebion and 
Cerinthus were reformers, and taught their 
reformed disciples to believe that Jesus was 
the Son of Joseph and Mary. In the second 
century Montanus was a reformer, and taught 
his reformed disciples to believe that females 



15 

were capable of the sacred Ministry, and 
that the Church had not the power to absolve 
from sins. In the third age, Sabellius and 
Novatian were reformers, and taught their 
reformed disciples, the former, that there 
was no Trinity of Persons; the latter, as 
Montanus had done, that the Church had not 
unlimited power to absolve the penitent. In 
the fourth age, Arius, Aerius, and Jovinian, 
were reformers, and taught their reformed 
disciples new improvements. Arius taught, 
that Christ was not consubstantial with the 
Father; Jovinian, besides his almost Luther- 
an aversion to celibacy, taught that fasting 
and corporeal austerities were useless; Aerius 
taught that prayers for the dead were un- 
profitable, and invented one of Calvin's lead- 
ing principles, that Bishops and Priests are 
equal. In the fifth age, Pelagius, Vigilantius, 
and the Predcstinarians, turned reformers. 
Pelagius taught his reformed disciples to be- 
lieve that original sin was a fable, and divine 
grace unnecessary; Vigilantius, that prayer 
to the Saints was unprofitable, and a respect 
for their relics superstitious; the Predesti- 
narians, that God created some to be damn- 
ed. In the eighth ceutury, the Iconoclast re- 
formers taught that every piece of canvas or 
marble that represented a religions subject 
was superstitious. In the eleventh, Bereri- 
garius became a reformer, and taught his re- 



16 



formed disciples to believe, that in the Holy 
Eucharist, the body of Christ was not really 
present, but really absent. I pass over seve- 
ral tribes of fanatical reformers, the Mani- 
cheans, who admitted two principles; the Pe- 
trobrusians, who denied the sacrifice of the 
Mass, Prayers for the Dead, and Infant Bap- 
tism; the Waldenses, who maintained that a 
Minister of the Church could not possess any 
property without sin, and that all dominion 
was founded in grace; the Albigenses, the 
Wickliffites, and Hussites, who revived many 
ancient errors, and invented new ones. It is 
true, that our old fashioned Church, which 
had seen the sects of these various reformers 
rise and fall one after another, had the ill 
manners to consider all these reformers as 
heretics, and their reformed doctrines and 
improvements of the faith as heresies, and 
condemned them as such. 

But these were timid and bungling reform- 
ers. Most of them were only retail dealers 
in new doctrines, and never acquired any ex- 
tensive or permanent credit. One thing is 
manifest; that although these reformers all 
quoted Scripture to establish their several 
errors, they all followed that rule of faith, 
which you and your Presbyterian friend so 
unreasonably impute to us, the liberty of be- 
lieving or disbelieving what they pleased. 



17 



1 his is the hinge on which all the reforma- 
tion of these Heseriarchs turned. 

In the sixteenth century, Luther, a Ger- 
man friar, began to rival, and soon eclipsed 
the feats of these reforming worthies. I need 
not say that this wholesale innovator, while 
he lived in his monastery, was humble, meek, 
devout, and chaste; but that as soon as he 
turned reformer, he exchanged these virtues 
for their opposite vices, and became a man 
of violent temper, extreme vanity and pride, 
and ungovernable lust. All this he himself 
admits. His style of eloquence was peculiar 
to himself; but like his moral character, 
as far remote as possible from that of an 
Apostle, or envoy of God. His language, 
larded with devils and bedaubed with filth, is 
such a sink of coarse declamation and ran- 
corous invective, as never astonished the 
world either before or since. I could refer 
you to his works for evidence of this. Bre- 
reley, in his learned work, the Protestant's 
Apology for the Roman Church; Bossuet, 
in his History of the Variations of the Pro- 
testant Churches; and Bishop Milner, in his 
Letters to Dr. Sturges, have given a great 
variety of quotations from the printed works 
of this reformer, which the friend of modesty 
and decency cannot read without horror and 
disgust. Thus qualified, he began and be- 
came the chief agent in that revolution which 



18 



you call the Reformation. I have looked for 
the holiness of this revolution in religion, in 
its author, in its origin, in its motive, in the 
means of its establishment, in its effects; but 
I have looked in vain. The holiness of Lu 
ther's reformation I cannot find. 

The Catholic faith is a regular and well- 
connected fabric, formed by the hand of a 
Divine Architect. Every part of it is con- 
nected with and dependent on the whole. 
Luther hastily and passionately abandoned 
this, without having yet framed any pre* 
certed system of belief. Accident and re- 
sentment guided his choice, both in his aban- 
donment of his ancient faith, and his con- 
trivance of a new one. From enveighing 
against some local and temporary abuses in 
the dispensation of Indulgences, he proceed- 
ed to deny their efficacy. This led him to the 
consideration of the Sacrament of penance^, 
the other Sacraments, the Remission of Sins, 
Justifying Grace, Sec. and every step led 
him further into error. Having once begun 
to roll down the hill of reformation, he knew 
not how to stop the headlong impetuosity of 
his course. He proceeded to demolish one 
revealed dogma after another, with fatal, but 
not remorseless activitv. To supply the im- 
mense void which he had created, he revived 
the defunct here- tfontanus, ^ovatian. 

Aerius, Vigilantius, Berengarius, and the 



19 



Iconoclasts, and made a selection from the 
doctrines of the Antinomians, Predestinari- 
ans, Waldenses, and other enthusiasts, as 
chance, or accident, or fancy suggested. To 
these exploded errors, he added equally ex- 
travagant inventions of his own; such as a 
new system of faith and justification, a new 
system of sacramental doctrine, a new and 
commodious system of church government, of 
divine worship and moral duty. In all these 
changes, what rule did he follow? The rule 
of all preceding reformers, which was the li- 
berty of believing what he pleased in matters 
of faith. This turbulent and sensual innova- 
tor adopted or rejected, believed or disbeliev- 
ed what he pleased, till the violence of his 
remorseless passions, or his fanaticism, disor- 
dered his understanding. Thus a private in- 
dividual, not remarkably recommended by 
any extraordinary virtues, bnt confessedly 
disgraced by some notorious vices, in defi- 
ance of the regular and ordinary authority of 
Christ's Church, without mission, without 
miracles, introduced all these changes of re- 
ligion — as great changes as those which were 
sanctioned by the miracles, and divine mis- 
sions of Moses and Jesus Christ. All this in- 
fatuated collection of compiled and invented, 
of ancient and modern heresies, he taught his 
deluded disciples to call a reformation of re- 
ligion. 



20 



But this was only the beginning of the 
evil. In spite of the prohibition and curses 
of Luther, his disciples soon claimed their 
master's privilege of believing and teaching 
what they pleased. Actuated by this rule 
and principla, they soou formed more systems 
of religion, than you or I can enumerate. — 
From the operation of this unholy, this li- 
centious principle, in a few years, Zuingli- 
anism, Calvinism, Anabaptism, Arminianism, 
Socinianism, and twenty other sects, sprung 
up on the continent, and were soon trans- 
planted into this country. From the opera- 
tion of this same principle in our island, which 
was then Catholic, some adopted the opin- 
ions of Henry or Seymour, of Cranmer or 
Elizabeth, of Presbyterians, Puritans, Unita- 
rians, Independents, Dippers, Quakers, Me- 
thodists, Swedenborgians, and so forth, down 
to the last of our Protestant prophets and re- 
formers, whether male or female. From the 
operation of the same principle, while I still 
adhere to the old creed of my fathers, of your 
fathers, who saw the beginning of every mo- 
dern sect, some of my neighbours follow one 
religion, some another, trying all, except the 
right one, by turns, and sticking long to none. 
After three hundred years of industry, the re- 
formation is not yet completed; and it never 
will be completed, as long as men usurp the 
authority of believing what they please. 



21 

Of all these various and discordant sects, 
only one can be the true Church. Can you 
tell me what I am in conscience bound to 
obey, to the exclusion of all the rest? Can 
you give me a satisfactory reason why I should 
prefer the reformer Luther to the reformer 
Arius: why I should prefer Elizabeth to 
Knox, Wesley to Priestly, or any of them to 
Mrs. Southgate? I defy you to do so, with- 
out violating the principle from which all 
these reformations sprung: a principle which 
if it be condemnable in one sect of Protest- 
antism, is condemnable in all. 

My point is proved. I hope you now ad- 
mit it. Our religion is essentially fixed. — 
Yours is essentially changeable. Ours is wed- 
ed to unity. Yours is a stranger to it. Ours 
was delivered. Yours invented. We in Pe- 
ter's ship are held by a sheet anchor safe in 
our moorings. You are afloat on the ocean 
of conflicting opinions, without a pilot, with- 
out a compass, " tossed to and fro, and car- 
ried about with every wind of doctrine, by the 
sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, where- 
by they lie in wait to deceive." Eph. iv. 14. 
Enjoying this consistency of faith and secu-> 
rity of conscience, believe me, Mr. Hardman, 
we Catholics see uothing to envy in that mo- 
bility of faith which is so natural, that unea- 
siness of conscience which is so common and 
so reasonable among the various sects of re- 



2: 



formed Christians. Neither do we feel the 
slightest temptation to exchange our aposto- 
lic and immutable rule of faith for the Protes- 
tant privilege of believing as many errors as 
we please: but while you profess the creed 
of the Apostles of the reformation, " I be- 
lieve whatever I please," let the Catholie, 
without censure, enjoy so much of your pri- 
vilege, as to profess his rule of faith in the 
Creed of other Apostles: I believe the Holy 
Catholic Church. 

Gentlemen, I must reserve my reflections 
and reply for my next letter. 

I am, fee, John Harp man. 



ON THE 
RULE OP FAITH. 



LETTER III. 

A Winter Evening Dialogue behveen John 
Hardman and John Cardwell, or Thoughts 
on the Rule of Faith, in a Series of 
Letters, &c. &c. &c. 

1. Mr. Hardman's Perplexity. 2. Cause of Protestant 
Inconsistency. 3. Catholics duly reverence the Holy 
Scriptures. 4. Dr. Hardwhrs " Rule of Faith truly 
stated." 

Kirkham, March 25th, 1817. 
Gentlemen, 

1 . Here Mr. Cardwell paused, as if he wait- 
ed for my reply. I was, I confess, in a kind 
of reverie at the moment, reflecting on the 
striking contrast which he had just presented 
to my notice. I had often observed the fact, 
with a degree of surprise and envy, that a 
Papist never doubts about the truth of his re- 
ligion; while Protestants of all descriptions 
are so apt to be disturbed with doubts about 
the truth, and scruples about the security of 
theirs. The instructed Papist, I was saying 
1 



to myself, has something in his religion, 
which we have not in oora xed and 

immoveable in his faith. At the approach of 
death, as well as in the midst of the gaie* - 
of life, he firmly believes that he is in the 
right road, and has only to follow it to obtain 
ition. He feels neither i - : doubts, 
nor scruples on that point. Though we ply 
him with numbt lpture. and 

reproach him with ignorance of the Bible; 
though we study to annoy and scandalize him 
with outrageous invectives in every shape, 
and with exaggerated tales of the tyranny of 
their Popes, the vices of their clergy, the 
perseeu:. : My. the horrors of the in- 
quisition — things which, if they were true, 
candour must allow, are no concern or fault 
of his; though we denominate his church - - 
perstitious. idolatrous, and a and call 

the Pope Antichrist, and other opprobrious 
nicknames: yet so it is: in spite of all our 
abuse and contempt of the Roman Church; 
of the painful oppression of se- 
vere penal laws, he smiles at our efforts, and 
remains as immoveable as a rock. He u a 
fixed, as we are unsteady. He is as much 
at peace, as we are uneasy. His religion 
has some principle of union and security to 
which ours is a stranger. I have even known 
P. Lata nisc themselves at our expense, 
and make both our scruples and changes in 
religion a matter of ridicule and banter. I 



have sometimes heard them say, " Such an 
one was twenty years ago brought up a 
churchman; then he turned Methodist; then 
Presbyterian; and last week he was dipped 
an Anabaptist in a horse-pond: where will the 
blockhead's Bible lead him to next?" 

However, recollecting myself, and having 
previously learnt my lesson from your pam- 
phlet, I replied: " We Protestants do not be- 
lieve what we please. We follow the scrip- 
tures. The Bible is our only rule of faith. 
But how can you have the rule of truth? The 
doctrine of Christ and his Apostles makes no 
part of your religious education. With the 
New Testament you have no acquaintance. 
The generality of you are as ignorant of the 
words of Christ, as you are of the Alcoran." 

2. Sir, replied my friend, your favourite 
authors of this invincible pamphlet, are blind 
guides, who have led you into a variety of 
mistakes. I have neither leisure nor inclina- 
tion to follow them through all the wanderings 
of their groping blindness. But in compli- 
ance with your desire, I will endeavour to 
set you right in a few of the most essential 
particulars. Permit me, however, to observe, 
that I do not at all admire that embarrass- 
ment and darkness of reasoning which both 
bewilders your authors, and puzzles their 
readers. I love clearness of ideas. I like 
to see my way before me. Allow me there- 
fore to ri'kr your attention to one remark 



which I have already made. The Catholic 
faith is one : the Protestant faiths are mani- 
fold. Our religion is always the same: yours 
as changeable as the wind. We are but one 
Church: you a collection of many different 
and discordant sects. This is a striking con- 
trast, in which there is something radically 
wrong. This very fact, so visible and unde- 
niable, if we attentively consider its origin, 
its nature, and its effects, is at first sight a 
very strong presumption that the Catholic is 
right, and the Protestant wrong. For, truth 
is one and consistent, error is manifold and 
contradictory: and as unity is the character- 
istic of religious truth, so variation is the 
mark of religious error. But without urging 
this consideration at present, here let me ask 
you, whence arises this singular contrast? 
How comes it that we preserve that unity, 
which cannot sojourn among you? Every 
effect must have an adequate cause: and an 
effect so momentous as the stability of our 
faith, and the mutability and uncertainty of 
yours, must have a very powerful cause in- 
deed — a cause, which reaches to the very vi- 
tals of each system of religion. Sir, to go a 
little further than that which I have already 
advanced, the cause of this phenomenon, 
which is so honourable to us, and which is so 
humiliating, and ought to be so alarming to 
you, is not wrapped up in darkness, or veiled 
in impenetrable mystery. It is visible and 



manifest to every eye. It springs from this 
source. You follow a false and delusive rule 
of faith. We follow one, which as it is quite 
different in its nature, so it produces quite 
different effects. You profess to be guided 
by the Bible alone, as interpreted by your 
own individual judgment. We adhere to the 
Bible as interpreted by the original, perpe- 
tual, and Universal Church. Yours teaches 
you to indulge the pride of individual curiosi- 
ty and endless speculation, and consecrates 
all the errors which your ingenuity can in- 
vent. Ours teaches us the humility and wis- 
dom of checking our own individual fantasies, 
and submitting with the docility of faith to the 
truths which Christ and his apostles taught. 
You deny the infallibility of the Catholic 
Church; and lo! you confer infallibility on 
every individual Protestant, be he wise or 
simple. Strange and unenviable inconsis- 
tency! you give to every one of your disciples 
more extensive authority, than we give to the 
Pope and the whole Church united. How 
can such a strange anomaly lead you to unity 
and truth? Shall I disclose the real fact? 
You may be said to have no rule of faith at 
all. The Bible is not a rule to you, but you 
are a rule to the Bible. You make it -speak 
what you please. 

.i. But before I proceed to prove by argu- 
ment, that your rule of faith is as false and 
delusive, as ours is safe, satisfactory, and 
1* 



conducive to truth, let me request your at- 
tention to a few considerations. If we deny 
that the Bible is the rule of faith, our motives 
are, not as your authors assert, a preference 
of human opinions to the word of God, but a 
preference of the word of God to human opin- 
ions: not a contempt or neglect of the inspir- 
ed writings; but a deference to the letter, a 
compliance with the spirit, an obedience to 
the voice of divine revelation. Our motives 
are a love of truth, and a respect for the Bi- 
ble. We respect the Bible more than you 
do. We respect it so much, that we think it 
impious to pervert or abuse it, either by pro- 
fanation or misinterpretation. You, notwith- 
standing the hollowness of empty profession, 
respect it so little, that you make it the in- 
strument and sanction of unlimited and end- 
less error. Our respect for the Bible watches 
over the purity of its translation. Your want 
of respect recommends erroneous and corrupt 
translations, as the word of God. To tell you 
the truth, Sir, your reverence for the Bible is 
apparent, and ours real. 

The Catholic Church, from her cradle in 
the Apostles' time, has been the chosen de- 
pository, the faithful guardian, and the suc- 
cessful preserver of the Holy Scriptures. 
To her and for her the whole of the New 
Testament was originally written. She has 
always duly estimated, as she now duly esti- 
mates, the immense value of this divine trea- 



sure. She venerates as divine all the books 
both of the Old and New Testament. She 
considers them all " as given by inspiration 
of God, and profitable for doctrine, for re- 
proof, for correction, for instruction in right- 
eousness, that the man of God may be per- 
fect, furnished to every good work." 2 Tim. 
iii. 16, 17. As she received from the same 
source, so she admits on the same authority, 
and believes with the same faith, all the 
books of either Testament — not only the six- 
ty six which you are pleased to allow, but al- 
so the nine or ten, amounting to one fifth of 
the Old Testament, and including the sublime 
and eloquent books of Ecclesiasticus and 
Wisdom, and the exemplary, instructive, and 
beautiful histories of Tobias, Susanna, and 
the Maccabees, which your deference to the 
chair of Moses, and hostility to the Church 
of Christ, have taught you to reject from the 
sacred canon as apocryphal. She reads them 
to her children. She recommends them to 
their pious and attentive perusal. Her Li- 
turgy and public devotions are chiefly ex- 
tracted from them. By their authority also 
she confirms the truths of her unerring Creed. 
But knowing that the best of books may be 
perverted by misconstruction, and abused by 
presumption, and having learnt by the long 
experience of fifteen centuries before your 
sorts had any existence, thai every pretended 
reformation of the faith, or rather let me say, 



8 

that every error and heresy which has scan- 
dalized and divided the Church of Christ, had 
its source in the abuse of good scripture, and 
sought to justify its usurpation and errors by 
arbitrary interpretations of the sacred text, 
She has always diligently and properly ex- 
horted her children to read it with the dispo- 
sitions of a reverent, humble and docile mind, 
that they may use it to profit, and not abuse 
it to their perdition. Conformably with this 
spirit of piety and wisdom, her discretion, ful- 
ly justified by her reverence of the holy books 
and her knowledge of human weakness, has, 
in times of religious innovation and religious 
frenzy, regulated or restrained the reading of 
them, with a solicitude proportioned to the 
local or temporary dangers to which she saw 
the faithful exposed. Actuated by the same 
laudable motives, she watches over the puri- 
ty of scriptural translation, and stigmatizes 
those versions, into which the spirit of here- 
tical innovation has infused its poison. She 
has at all times broken to her children the 
bread of the divine word; but she has at some 
periods been admonished by external circum- 
stances to forbear throwing pearls to swine. 
Our Church received the scriptures from her 
first pastors, the Apostles and Evangelists, 
from whom she had previously received the 
faith. From the same authority she received 
both the scriptures themselves, and the rule 
of interpreting them. To this she adheres in 



spite of your senseless clamours. Her dis- 
cipline, so far from being dictated by the mo- 
tives which your divines so liberally, but so 
uncharitably impute to us, is sanctioned by 
sound sense, and commanded by the scripture 
itself. We are ever mindful of that admoni- 
tion of our first Pope, the Apostle Peter: 
" Understanding this first, that no prophecy 
of scripture is made by private interpretation." 
2 Ep. i. 20. We adhere to the sound advice 
ol another apostle: " Keep that which is com- 
mitted to thy trust: but avoid profane and 
vain babblings, and opposition of science false- 
ly so called, which some professing have erred 
concerning the faith." 1 Tim. vi. 20. " Hold 
fast the form of sound words which thou hast 
heard of me in the faith and in the love which 
is in Jesus Christ. Keep the good thing 
committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost, 
who dwelleth in us." 2 Tim. i. 13. Guided 
by these sound principles, a Catholic duly re- 
verences the authority and justly estimates 
the value of the Holy Scriptures. He walks 
in the just medium between deficiency on the 
one hand, and a superstitious excess on the 
other; using them a3 a guide and helper in 
the right road; not as a delusive beacon to 
mislead him into the by-paths of error. When 
you separated from the Catholic Church, you 
carried the Bible indeed with you, but not 
the rule of interpreting it. Hence as we, by 
our rule, have preserved the integrity of faith, 



10 



so yours has made you the sport of continual 
error. 

Mr. Card well here made an apology for 
speaking so long, and expressed an apprehen- 
sion that the length of his discourse would fa- 
tigue my attention, and exhaust my patience. 
I assured him that his apprehensions were 
groundless; and feeling a great interest as 
well as curiosity in his conversation, I re- 
quested him to continue. Mr. Cardwell then 
proceeded. 

The rule of faith is one of the most impor- 
tant subjects that can challenge the enquiry, 
or engage the attention of a Christian. Just 
as our rule is right or wrong, our faith is true 
or erroneous. If we walk in the right road, 
we cannot go astray. If we pursue a wrong 
one, it is more than probable that we shall go 
wrong, till we have forsaken it, and retraced 
our steps. This subject, which is, or ought 
to be decisive of every minor controversy in 
religious matters, has been treated by our di- 
vines with a diligence and a copiousness suit- 
able to its importance; and on no subject has 
the exertion of their abilities been distinguish- 
ed and rewarded with more brilliant success. 
I hold in my hand a complete treatise on this 
subject, published near a century ago, by a 
very eminent divine of our communion, the 
victorious defender of Catholic truth against 
the confederate hostility of Leslie, Stilling- 
fleet, and Tillotson, — the Reverend Edward 



11 

Hawarden, D. D. It is entitled: TJie Rule 
of Faith truly stated. It exhibits a clear, 
methodical, and comprehensive view of the 
question, it almost exhausts the subjects: and 
besides its theological merits, is one of the 
best specimens of legitimate reasoning and 
conclusive logic in the English language. 
Though this eminent controvertist was follow- 
ed by the ingenious author of Pax Vobis, 
and very recently by the Reverend Joseph 
Berington, the Reverend John Lingard, and 
Mr. Langley, who, each in the exercise of his 
peculiar powers, has shewn himself a worthy 
associate of the learned Doctor; yet he had 
left them little to do, but to expand his prin- 
ciples, to place some of his arguments in a 
new light, and to repel the attacks of subse- 
quent opponents. Their united efforts have 
fairly met, fully discussed, and in my opinion 
clearly decided in our favour this paramount 
question. Their gigantic powers have com- 
pelled the arrogance of Luther, the fickleness 
of Chillingworth, the ludicrous scorn of the 
present Bishop of Llandaff, and, by anticipa- 
tion, the petulant ignorance of your Calvin- 
istic pamphleteers to bow down before them.* 

* See the following recent publications: " Strictures 
/>nDr. Marsh's Comparative View," &c. and " Preface" 
to " The Faith and Doctrine of the Catholic Church, by 
the Rev. John Lingard." Sec also " Letters on Reli- 
gious Subjects, between a Dissenting Minister, in Bir- 
mingham, and a Roman Catholic, by William Langley." 



12 



These distinguished divines have not only es- 
tablished the truth and certainty of the Ca- 
tholic rule of faith; but have swept away all 
those flimsy webs of textual and conjectural 
sophistry, with which the ingenuity of Pro- 
testant writers has contrived to obscure and 
deform it. They have proved, with the clear- 
ness of mathematical demonstration, that the 
Bible neither is, nor ever was intended to be, 
nor probably ever will or can be, the sole and 
exclusive rule of Christian faith. They have 
impannelled a grand jury, consisting of apos- 
tles and evangelists, of primitive Christians, 
and even modern Protestants, who have de- 
livered their verdict; and that verdict has ac- 
quitted our rule, and found your's guilty. It 
would be presumptuous in me not to tread in 
their footsteps. Dr. Hawarden's " Rule of 
Faith truly stated" is composed with such 
clear method and exact precision, that it is 
easy to analyze it. His main arguments are 
reducible to the proofs of twelve propositions. 
Thus the substance of his reasoning lies with- 
in the compass of a nut-shell. 

Mr. Lingard's arguments, it appears, have silenced the 
Bishop of LlandafT, though they raised an extraordinary 
peal of muttering thunder, but a brutiun fulmen, in 
the Deanry of Peterborough. Mr. Langley, whose Let- 
ters may be considered as a full refutation of the Calvin- 
ists' " Letters to the Rev. Thomas Sherburn," have 
taught the Dissenting Minister the prudence of retiring 
from the contest. 



13 



Mr. Cardwell now opened the book and 
read as follows. 

1. All necessary points of Christian doc- 
trine were both taught and believed by Chris- 
tians before any part of the New Testament 
was written. 

2. All the necessary points of faith were 
by Christ's institution to have been conveyed 
to succeeding ages, although the books of the 
New Testament had never been composed. 

3. The Holy Scripture no where tells us 
plainly that it contains the whole belief of the 
first Christians, or that all necessary points 
of faith are plain in it. 

4. It does not evidently appear that the 
Holy Scripture has as yet ever been the only 
rule of any man's belief. 

5. It is an undoubted fact, that those who 
own no other rule of Christian faith and wor- 
ship besides plain Scripture, when they are 
once in power, will not easily grant the same 
liberty to others, by which they became a bo- 
dy themselves, but even disallow a free and 
unbiassed study of the Holy Scriptures. 

6. There is such an alloy of obscurity in 
the Sacred Writings that they could not bring 
all to the same faith, worship and communion, 
who desired to be directed by Scripture alone. 

7. To say that the Scripture alone is the 
rule of faith, is only a genteel way of appeal 
Uig to a man's own judgment from that of all 
mankind. 



14 

8. Nothing was ever the subject of greater 
disputes, or is less fit to unite Christians at 
present than the sense of Scripture alone. 

9. All necessary points of Christianity can- 
not be drawn from Scripture alone. 

10. The apostles and evangelists did not 
write the New Testament with this design, 
that it might be a complete rule of the faith 
and worship of christians. 

1 1 . The Scripture itself recommends apos- 
tolical traditions. 

12. The Scripture itself also recommends 
Church authority. 

The learned author illustrates these twelve 
formidable propositions with such a blaze of 
evidence, and establishes them by such a 
weight of solid argument, as ought to open 
the eyes and reform the prejudices of the 
most superstitious Bible-man; and then draws, 
from his well established premises, this fair 
and legitimate conclusion: Scripture is not 
the whole and only rule of christian 
Religion. 

The three first propositions are so undenia- 
ble, that no one who knows, when the Scrip- 
tures were written, and what they contain, 
can seriously contest them. It is an abuse 
of reasoning to oppose to the third proposition, 
as Protestant divines are apt to do with a 
shew of confidence, those words of St. Paul, 
that the Old Testament was able to make 
Timothy wise to salvation; or that all Scrip- 



15 

ture is profitable for doctrine, &c. Their 
first argument would prove that the New 
Testament is superfluous: the second that 
even the epistle to Timothy would be sufficient. 
Their argument has no force till they prove 
that what is profitable for doctrine, is sufficient 
for doctrine. As to the fourth, I ask one 
question: Where is the Bible-man who had 
no religion before he read the Bible; or whose 
reading was not attended with the influence 
of other instruction? Where is the Bible- 
man who observes the letter of the Bible con- 
cerning the observation of the sabbath, the 
washing of feet, obeying the Church, holding 
fast the traditions, possessing money, or a 
purse, or two garments, or calling others or 
permitting others to call him master, and 
twenty other things ? All the penal laws that 
have ever been enacted, as well as those 
which still so heavily oppress us, bear witness 
to the fifth. Whenever I hear a Bible maniac 
deny the sixth proposition, I take it for grant- 
ed, that he does not know that the Old Tes- 
tament was written in Hebrew, a language 
difficult from its antiquity and want of co- 
piousness, and the New Testament in Greek, 
not perfectly easy from its complexity; and 
that he has never seen the shelves of a libra- 
ry bending under the weight of folio explana- 
tions of scriptural difficulties. Neither can 
I, except at the expense of his understand- 
ing, suppose that he has read in St. Peter, 



16 

that in St. Paul's epistles " are some things 
hard to be understood, which they that are 
unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also 
the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction." 
2 Ep. iii. 16. Every Protestant enthusiast 
clearly exemplifies the seventh and eighth 
propositions. The ninth is clear from this 
striking fact. All agree that a belief in the 
authenticity and divine inspiration of the 
Scriptures is a necessary point of Christian 
belief. But these points cannot be proved 
from the Bible alone. The tenth proposition 
is indeed conjectural; but is fully proved from 
the motives, the occasions, the plan and the 
contents of these sacred writings. In the ninth 
and tenth propositions repose the strength, the 
glory, the truth and security of the Catholic 
rule of faith, and the Catholic religion. Scrip- 
ture recommends apostolical traditions. Scrip- 
ture recommends Church authority. I for- 
bear the well known texts: but we retain 
these traditions. We submit to this authori- 
ty. We, in conjunction with the Catholics of 
the first, and all succeeding ages, follow these 
sacred injunctions of our Lord and his apos- 
tles. We use the Scriptures, but abuse them 
not. We reverence them with a religious 
deference; but not with the superstitious and 
almost idolatrous homage of Protestant fana- 
tics. Hence we have all the advantages of 
your rule of faith, without its delusions and 
absurdities. The word of God, written and 



17 



unwritten, and conveyed to us from its source, 
through the medium of that church, which 
Christ established to teach us, and which he 
commanded us to hear, is our rule of faith: 
a rule which is at once clear, adequate, im- 
mutable, and catholic — the cause of our un- 
changeableness, the basis of our security, 
our comforts and our hopes. 

But, Gentlemen, I must reserve the sequel 
of our conversation for another opportunity 
I am, &x. John Hardman. 



ANECDOTE. 

A Chinese barber, who had embraced the 
christian religion, passing along the streets, 
found a purse which contained twenty pieces 
of gold. He immediately looked about to see 
if any person was in search of it, and per- 
ceiving a gentleman at some distance, ran 
after him, calling him as he went ; and as 
soon as he overtook him, asked him if he had 
not lost something. The gentleman examin- 
ed, and not finding his purse cried out, " I 
have lost twenty pieces of gold." " Don't 
make yourself uneasy," replied the barber, 
" here is your purse, and all that it contain- 
ed is safe." The gentleman recovering him- 
self from his alarm, appeared struck with as- 
tonishment at meeting with such honesty in 
a person of so low a rank in life ; and asked 



Li 



him his name, place of abode, and his profes- 
sion. " It can be of little consequence to 
you," replied the barber, to know who I am ; 
let it suffice if I tell you that I am a chris- 
tian, and one of those who profess to follow 
the holy law, which forbids us not only to 
steal privately what is concealed in another's 
house, but even to keep that which we may 
happen to find, if it be possible to discover the 
lawful owner." — The purity of the christian 
morality, thus explained and exemplified by a 
man so much his inferior in rank and educa- 
tion, made so powerful an impression upon 
the mind of the gentleman, that he repaired 
immediately to one of the churches belong- 
ing to the christians to apply for instruction 
in the mysteries of our holy faith. 



ON THE 
RULE OP FAITH, 



LETTER IV. 

A Winter Evening Dialogue between John 
Hardman and John Car dwell, or Thoughts 
on the Rule of Faith, in a Series of 
Letters, &c. &c. &c. 

1. Mr. Hardman's Reflections and Objections. 2. De- 
lusion of Protestants. 3. Who do not follow the 
Bible alone. 4. But admit a Church Authority. 

Kirkham, April 25, 1817. 
Gentlemen, 

Mr. Cardwell's discourse made a deeper 
impression on my mind, than I was at first 
willing to avow. I could not help consider- 
ing your writings as weak and untenable, and 
his arguments as sound and solid truths. At 
the same time, I felt with pain, that his re-» 
marks, though distinguished by sound sense, 
were quite at variance with all my precon- 
ceived notions and habits of thinking on the 
subject of religion. I opposed to him all 
those passages of your pamphlet which I 



thought best adapted to refute Popery, and 
establish our religious tenets. To my sur- 
prise, I found that all my objections were as 
familiar to him, as his arguments were new 
to me. They neither excited his surprise by 
their novelty, nor shook his confidence by 
their weight, but received a prompt and sat- 
isfactory reply. As his discourse advanced, 
I could perceive my knowledge increase, 
and my prejudices vanish. What, said I to 
myself, are things really so ? Are we Pro- 
testants the sport of artful teachers ? Is Lu- 
ther's glorious reformation to be classed with 
the heresies and schisms of ancient times ; 
differing from them only in this, that where- 
as theirs were ancient reformations, ours 
is a modern one; theirs reached only to a 
few speculative points, whereas ours embra- 
ces so many new opinions ? No wonder 
that, notwithstanding all our abuses and il- 
liberally, the well-instructed Papist remains 
satisfied with the stability of his own faith, 
and feels little partiality or reverence for our 
ever changing and unsettled opinions. I 
found to my astonishment, that the Papists 
have surer grounds for their faith, than I had 
been aware of: that they love and respect the 
Bible at least as much as we do: but that 
their respect for the Bible makes them relig- 
iously fearful of profaning its sacredness by 
false or foolish interpretations, which are so 
common among us; and checking their cu- 



riosity, presumption, and pride, teaches them 
the humility and wisdom to prefer the sense 
of the majority of Christians, to their own in- 
dividual blunders and conceits. This is just 
as things should be. For, the opinion of the 
majority of Christians all over the world, has 
a better chance of being right, than the opin- 
ion of a presumptuous individual. Surely, if 
this be Popery, it is not so odious and absurd 
as we are taught to believe: but so far, at 
least, is innocent, rational, wise, and pious. 
Besides, if the Bible was not the original and 
primitive rule of faith, why should it be so 
now? Has Luther, or any other person ten 
times wiser and better than Luther, authori- 
ty to introduce a change of so great moment, 
as to abolish the primitive rule of faith, which 
leads to unity, and to substitute a new one, 
which has caused, but cannot cure, so much 
disorderly discord and confusion ? I am real- 
ly of Mr. Cardwell's opinion, that to tell eve- 
ry blockhead to gather his religion from the 
Bible, is only giving a receipt how to make 
as many religions, as there are bungling ex- 
positors of the Holy Scripture. — It cannot be 
denied that private judgment, blundering 
over the Bible, has, since the reformation, 
produced at least a hundred different religions 
in this island alone. Now as true religion is 
one, ninety-nine of these new biblical reli- 
gions must be false. It is equally undenia- 
ble, that the Roman Catholic Church is the 



most ancient and most numerous of all others. 
It professes never to change, or to have 
changed its faith, from the time of the Apos- 
tles. Its very name is Catholic, not Protes- 
tant. Its communion shows men and women 
of the most exemplary piety, and claims, all 
the ancient saints, even all those of our own 
calender, save one. It is acknowledged by 
some of the best and wisest Protestant di- 
vines, both at home and abroad, to be a true 
Church. This is seriously denied by none but 
fools and fanatics. If then we speak without 
prejudice and passion, ought we not to admit, 
that there is a great appearance of truth in 
what Mr. Sherburn told one of our clergy- 
men the other day, that there are ninety-nine 
chances to one, that the very best of the new 
biblical religions is false; and ninety-nine 
chances in a hundred, that his ancient Church 
is the true one. Truly this is as plain as an 
operation in the Rule of Three. But if it be 
true, that the noisy professions of our divines 
about following the Bible alone, be all a joke; 
if it be true, that while they profess to be 
guided by it, they artfully make it say what 
they please; and most of all, if it be true, that 
their interpretations are influenced by human 
authority, at the very moment when they dis- 
claim all deference to any authority but that 
of the Bible, then we are dupes, the play- 
things of artful or deluded teachers. We in 
fact admit an authority, which in words we 



disavow ; and in practice are necessitated to 
follow a popish rule, without either its plau- 
sibility, its consistency, or security. There 
appears to be some anomaly in this; some- 
thing that shuns the light. If we follow au- 
thority, why not follow authority of the most 
ancient, the most numerous, and most consis- 
tent body of Christians in the world ? There 
is something wrong here. Is it, that the 
doctrines which I have been taught are too 
new, and that our faith is not quite as sound 
as it should be ? 

Such, Gentlemen, was the frame of mind 
in which I began to consider the main con- 
troversy between the ancient Church and 
the modern one. But keeping these reflec- 
tions to myself, and desirous of hearing what 
further observations Mr. Cardwell had to offer, 
I again had recourse to your pamphlet, and 
with diminished confidence in my auxiliary, 
returned to the charge. Some of your twelve 
propositions, said I to Mr. Cardwell, are 
sensible and just; but others appear to stand 
in need of proof. Pardon me if I cannot ad- 
mit the fourth proposition, which says that 
"the Scripture has never been the only rule 
of any man's belief;" since it is the sole rule 
of Protestants, Presbyterians, Calvinists, 
Methodists, Anabaptists, Unitarians, and all 
sorts of Dissenters: — nor the fifth, which tells 
us that " those who own no other rule than 
plain Scripture, disallow a Tree and unbiassed 



study of the Holy Scripture; since we all 
subscribe to the Bible Society, whose object 
is to furnish every man, woman, and child, 
with the Bible, without note or comment:" — 
nor the seventh, which asserts, that " to call 
the Scripture alone the rule of faith, is only 
a genteel way of appealing to a man's own 
judgment. " I consider this assertion as 
nearer akin to the language of party, than of 
truth. 

2. Mr. Cardwell smiled at my objections. 
Dr. Hawarden's twelve propositions, said he, 
are so many axioms of truth. They have 
been established in the most satisfactory man- 
ner, both by that learned author, and many 
other Catholic writers. To prove each of 
them separately, would be a very easy matter. 
It would require only the trouble of reading 
his i Rule of Faith truly stated.' Conviction 
would be the result of its perusal. As you 
desire further information on these points, I 
will lend you the book, which you may read 
at your leisure. I know indeed that Protes- 
tants, though they are ever talking of unlim- 
ited freedom of inquiry, seldom look into a 
popish book. They commonly start from it, 
as they would from prison or infection. In 
this they resemble certain ancient bigots, 
who stopped all enquiry by this disdainful 
question: " What good can come from Naza- 
reth?" For this reason they are commonly 
better acquainted with the paganism of China 



or Hindostan, than with the doctrines of 
Catholicity. This aversion to learn our doc- 
trines from those who know them best, ac- 
counts in some measure for the extreme ig- 
norance, the childish prejudices, the silly 
contempt, and groundless animosity, which 
many staunch Protestants betray with regard 
to our religion. This book you may read 
without any apprehension of mischief. It 
will reward your labour, Sir, though I thought 
it superfluous to prove gravely points which 
appear to me so plain and undebateable, I am 
ready to comply with your wishes. Let me 
only in the first place assure you, that the 
three propositions to which you object, are as 
easily demonstrated as any proposition in 
Euclid: and that there is no need of many 
words, nor does it require much gravity of 
reasoning or solemnity of countenance, to 
prove truths so evident. It is surprising to 
to see on what weak foundations the strong- 
est Protestant prejudices are commonly built. 
It is still more surprising, to see how easily 
you are duped, where you are least aware of 
illusion or deceit. You seem little sensible 
of the tricks which are put on yonr unsuspect- 
ing credulity. Why, Sir, you no more make 
the Bible the sole rule of your faith than I do. 
Your catechism, your prayer-book, sermons, 
conversation, and example, claim at least one 
half. You are no naore allowed freely to 
cull your religion from the Bible, than 1 am. 



8 

For unless you happen to collect from it a 
prescribed set of opinions, you immediately 
come within the restrictive influence of penal 
laws. You admit an interpretative authority 
almost as much as we do ; and let me say it, 
a human authority much more. There is, 
however, this difference between us. We 
openly avow it: you deceitfully disclaim it in 
words, while you artfully admit it in reality. 
But of these assertions I will vary my mode 
of proof. Instead of gravely producing any 
arguments of our own, I will give you the 
words of well informed writers of your own 
communion, who have honestly and ingenious- 
ly admitted what I assert. Sir Richard Steele, 
in his Letter to Pope Clement XI. fairly, 
though humorously, tells the plain truth to 
his Holiness. His words are these: 

u There is no other difference between us 
but this one, viz. that you (Catholics) cannot 
err in any thing you determine, and we never 
do: that is, in other words, that you are infal- 
lible, and we are always in the right. We 
cannot but esteem the advantage to be ex- 
ceedingly on our side in this case; because 
we have all the benefits of infallibility, with- 
out the absurdity of pretending to it; and 
without the uneasy task of maintaining a point 
so shocking to the understanding of mankind. 
And you must pardon us, if we cannot help 
thinking it to be as great and as glorious a 
privilege in us, to be always in the right with- 



out the pretence to infallibility, as it can be 
to you, to be always in the wrong with it. 

" Thus the Synod of Dort, in Holland, for 
whose unerring decisions public thanks to 
Almighty God are every three years offered 
up, with the greatest solemnity, by the mag- 
istrates in that country ; the Councils of the 
Reformed in France; the Assembly of the 
Kirk of Scotland; and, if I may presume to 
name it, the Convocation of England, have 
been all found to have the very same unques- 
tionable authority, which your Church claims 
solely upon the infallibility which resides in 
it, and the people to be under the very same 
strict obligation of obedience to their deter- 
minations, which with you is the consequence 
only of an absolute infallibility. The reason 
therefore, why we do not openly set up an 
infallibility is, that we can do without it. 
Authority results as well from power as from 
right: and a majority of votes is as strong a 
foundation for it as infallibility itself. 

With us, " Councils that may err, never 
do: and besides being composed of men, 
whose peculiar business it is to be in the right, 
it is very immodest for any private person to 
think them not so: because this is to set up 
a private corrupted understanding above a 
public uncorrupted judgment. Thus it is in 
the North, as well as the South: abroad, as 
well as at. home. All maintain the exercise 
of the same authority in themselves, which 



10 



yet they know not how so much as to speak 
of without ridicule in others. 

" In England, it stands thus. The Synod 
of Dort is of no weight. It determines many 
things wrong. The Assembly of Scotland 
hath nothing of a true authority, and is very 
much out in its scheme of doctrines, worship, 
and government. But the Church of England 
is vested with all authority, and justly chal- 
lengeth obedience. 

" If one crosses the river in the North, 
there it stands thus. The Church of England 
is not enough reformed. Its doctrine, wor- 
ship, and government, have too much of An- 
tichristian Rome in them. But the Kirk of 
Scotland hath a divine right from its only 
head Jesus Christ, to meet and to enact what 
to them shall seem fit, for the good of his 
Church. — Calvin and the Gospel go hand in 
hand, as if there was not a hair's breadth be- 
tween them. In Scotland, let a man depart 
an inch from the Confession of Faith and rule 
of worship established by the Assembly, and 
he will quickly find, that as cold a country as 
it is, it will be too hot for him. 

u We have found out a way unknown to 
your Holiness and your predecessors, of 
claiming all the rights that belong to infalli- 
bility, even while we exclaim and abjure the 
thing itself. We have a right to separate 
from you : but no persons living have a right 
to differ or separate from us. We make no 



11 



scruple to resemble you in our defences of 
ourselves, whenever we think proper. 

" And as I observed before, that there was 
no need for your pretending to infallibility: 
that it is better taken in the world, and as 
easy to establish the same authority without 
it; so here it will be obvious to those of your 
Church to observe, that there was no manner 
of necessity upon them to discard the Scrip- 
tures, as a rule of Faith open to all Christians, 
and to set up the Church in distinction to 
them; because they may see plainly now, 
that the same feats are to be performed, and 
with more decency, though not with more 
consistency, of which few are judges, without 
carrying things to such extremity. For at 
the same time that we are warmly contend- 
ing against your disputants, for the right of 
the people to search and consider the Gospel 
themselves, it is but taking care in some 
other of our controversies to fix it upon them, 
that they may not abuse this right; that they 
must not pretend to be wiser than their supe- 
riors; that they must take care to understand 
particular texts as the Church understands 
them, and as their guides who have an inter- 
pretative authority, understand them. 

" This we find to be as effectual with many 
as taking the Scriptures out of their hands. 
And because 1 , it is done in this gentleman-like 
manner, and gives them an opportunity of 
shewing their humility, it passeth very smooth- 



12 



ly off; without their considering the absurdity 
it leads to, that as our doctors differ, and 
councils too, this method layeth a necessity 
upon two different men, nay upon the same 
man in different circumstances, to understand 
the same text in two different, and often in 
two contrary senses. 

" And here again, with submission to your 
Holiness, I think we greatly surpass you in 
our conduct. For we have the same defini- 
tive authority which you have, without the 
reproach of depreciating the word of God: 
the people all the while being fully satisfied 
that we allow the Scripture to be their rule. 
And we do indeed in words preserve all autho- 
rity to the Scripture; bid with great dexterity 
we substitute, in fact , our own explanations, and 
doctrines drawn from those explanations, in- 
stead of it. And then one great privilege we 
enjoy above you: that every particular pastor 
amongst us is vested with the plenary autho- 
rity of an Ambassador from God; very much 
different from the maxims of your Church. — 
But the noisy make most noise every where, 
and few can contradict them." 

3. There is as much truth as wit in these 
observation of the i Spectator,' Sir Richard 
Steele. I do not mean to insinuate, that they 
prove you to be mere Bible-puppets, who 
move only as the wires are directed by the 
hands of the performer. But I do not hesi- 
tate to affirm, that they distinctly prove three 



* 13 

things: first, that the Bible is not your only 
rule of faith, even when you are unconscious 
of being under the direction of any other; se- 
condly, that in discarding the venerable guid- 
ance of the Catholics, or, as your Presbyte- 
rian friend terms it, the idolatrous and Anti- 
christian Church, you have only exchanged 
a stable and secure authority, for one less 
stable and secure : and thirdly, that while you 
deride and condemn the Papist rule, you can- 
not do well without it yourselves, but with an 
inconsistency that excites our ridicule or pity, 
you prefer the modern and usurped authority 
of a few heterodox teachers, in one small isl- 
and, to the divine authority of the Universal 
Church. Regardless of your canting decla- 
mation and hypocritical clamour about Pro- 
testant liberty and Popish slavery, about the 
Bible on the one hand, and Antichrist on the 
other, a very little penetration discovers to 
us the real point of difference between us. It 
just amounts to this. Your teachers say: 
Hear us: follow us. Ours say, Hear the 
Church. In the common affairs of life, 
when you want instruction and counsel, pru- 
dence bids you follow the best: and to do you 
justice, Mr. Hardman, in ordinary matters 
you are sufficiently acute and sensible. Tell 
me why, in your late alarming illness, ycu 
entrusted your life to the skill of the regular 
physician, rather than to the confident igno- 
rance of the quack; and I will tell you why, 



14 



in a concern of much greater importance than 
bodily health, I repose greater confidence in 
the Church of God, than in any inferior au- 
thority. A word is sufficient to the wise. I 
do not shut out the light of day, to study by 
the light of a candle. 

But still you persist that the Bible is the 
only rule of Protestants, Presbyterians, Cal- 
vinists, Methodists, Unitarians and the rest: 
and, that as such, they all subscribe to the 
Bible Society. Strange indeed; — birds of a 
feather flock together. How then does it 
happen, that while you all profess to follow 
the same track, some of you wing your de- 
vious flight to the North, others to the South; 
some to the East or West, and others to eve- 
ry point of the heretical compass? If you all 
follow the same rule of faith, why do you dis- 
agree ? Why have so many meeting houses 
of the different mushroom sects lately sprung 
up round our parish church; which your Ca- 
tholic ancestors, as well as mine, contributed 
to build above a hundred years before there 
was a Protestant in the world ? With fair 
play, you could not draw such different con- 
clusions from the same premises. Does the 
Bible say one thing at Kirkham, another at 
Treals, and quite the reverse at Rossiere and 
Wardless? In this diversity of pretended 
Bible religions, is it the Bible that leads you, 
or you lead the Bible? All sects spring up 
from delusion and enthusiasm, appealing not 



15 



so much to the Bible, as to their own con- 
struction of the Bible. By this process they 
form a new system to their taste. If this sys- 
tem has the fortune to subsist and prosper 
for awhile, the enthusiasm evaporates, and 
the ferment subsides. This is quite natural. 
You may observe a close analogy in uncork- 
ing a bottle of small beer. Pardon the com- 
parison; it is homely, but apposite. It fumes 
and foams, and sparkles at first, but soon sub- 
sides and grows vapid. As the sect loses its 
fervour, it loses its attraction, and begins to 
feel the attacks of some newly-excited enthu- 
siasm. The newest meeting house absorbs 
the enthusiasm of the parish; and leaves the 
most ancient ones nearly empty. Without 
having an awkward and surreptitious recourse 
to the arsenal of Catholicity, it has, in this 
state, no spiritual armour for self-defence, 
but such as the new-fashioned sect has an 
equal right to employ in hostility against it. 
Supported by its own sense of the Scripture, 
one enthusiastic sect thus makes reprisals on 
another, and supplants it, to be supported in 
its turn. This is the abridged history of all 
the sects that have pretended to spring from, 
and be guided by, the Bible alone. Alone, 
the Bible never did, and never could support 
any sect long. Every Bible sect in its turn, 
though it execrated with all the acrimony of 
sectarian devotion, the Catholic principle of 
a living definitive authority, which keeps u* 



16 



in union, harmony and peace, has soon found 
the necessity of resorting either openly, or 
what is the same thing to my argument, se- 
cretly, to other authority than the Bible. 
What they blamed, and, like your Calvinistic 
elder, still blame us for doing; with an incon- 
sistency, not at all incompatible with Bible- 
mania, they have soon been obliged to do 
themselves. During all this ridiculous and 
disgraceful farce, they inveigh against the au- 
thority of the Catholic Church; and still af- 
fect to follow nothing but the Bible. Is this 
glaring inconsistency to be ascribed to fana- 
ticism or hypocrisy? Certain it is, that it 
has opened the eyes of many Protestants, and 
has led them to peace and happiness in the 
bosom of the Catholic Church. If you be 
sincere, you cannot deem submission to tes- 
timonial and dignified authority, a crime in 
us, which you esteem a virtue of necessity 
among yourselves. Either forbear to imitate, 
or withhold your censure. 

Our Church has stood the test of eighteen 
centuries. She has had the benefit of long 
experience in observing the origin, the pro- 
gress, and extinction of a great variety of 
sects. Independenly of the divine institution, 
she has, during this long lapse of ages, had 
ample means of seeing the necessity of a liv- 
ing and speaking authority, to interpret the 
silent and dead letter of the Bible, in the nu- 
merous abortive attempts of fanaticism to fol- 



17 

low Scripture alone. She is true to her doc- 
trine, and consistent with herself. Compared 
with her apostolic antiquity, your reformation 
is yet young. But the damsel does begin to 
have a little experience. Though she began 
her diminutive career by coquetting with the 
Bible, she was soon admonished, and is now 
convinced of the dangers of such profane fa- 
miliarity. We consider her as the fairest of 
her family, and the least deformed, because 
reformed the least: yet many others, with the 
Bible in their hands, have always thought 
that she was too much clad in scarlet. To us 
who are impartial, but not indifferent obser- 
vers of her struggles with her younger sis- 
ters, it is curious, if not amusing, to see how 
easily she can accommodate her looks and 
language to the occasion. When she speaks 
to us, her language is: No Church authority; 
no traditions. O no, nothing but the Bible. 
When she is engaged with them, she finds 
that the Bible alone will not serve her turn. 
It is natural that the afflicted parent should 
rebuke her daughter, for first leading them 
astray by her bad example; and that the sis- 
ters should with insults ask her, how she can 
expect them to submit to her, when her own 
disobedience has taught them to despise their 
mother ? 

4. This is not an imaginary representation. 
It might be tedious at present to illustrate 
the subject by Catholic evidence. What our 



18 



divines therefore have written with a clear- 
ness and energy of reasoning worthy of the 
truth which they defend, to shew the farcical 
duplicity of your language and mode of pro- 
ceeding; to shew that you protest against, or 
what you will remember is the same thing, 
disbelieve your own principles as well as ours; 
and to shew that you are compelled to press 
some other rule into your service, as an in- 
dispensable auxiliary to the Bible, I shall 
pass over at this late hour of the evening; 
and according to promise will limit my quota- 
tions to the text of the Acts of your own Apos- 
tles. They speak from the tripod; as Sir 
Richard does from observation. The first of 
these Apostles is Henry VIII. How far he 
resembled our first Apostles Peter and Paul, 
in his character, his ministry, and the motives 
of his zeal, is pretty well understood. He 
gave the Bible to his converts; told them that 
it was the only avenue to the truth; and as- 
sured them from his own comfortable experi- 
ence, that it was as easy to understand, as 
that fourpence made a groat. But in a few 
years, viz. 1541, this Supreme Head of the 
Church tells the Parliament, that many tares 
grew up in his field among the corn: and two 
years afterwards prefixed this preamble to an 
Act for the advancement of true religion, and 
abolishment of the contrary: " Whereas ma- 
ny seditious and ignorant people have abused 
the liberty granted them for reading the Bible, 



19 

and great diversity of opinions, animosities, 
tumults and schisms have been occasioned by- 
perverting the sense of the Scripture; to re- 
trieve the mischiefs arising from thence, it is 
enacted, that a certain form of orthodox doc- 
trine, consonant to the inspired writings, 
and the doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic 
Church, shall be set forth as a standard of be- 
lief; that Tindal's false translation of the Old 
and New Testament, and all other books 
touching religion in the English tongue, con- 
trary to the (six) Articles of Faith, or that 
Summary of Doctrine published by the King, 
in 1540, or any time after, shall be suppres- 
sed, and forbidden to be read in the King's 
Dominions — and that the reading the Bible 
is likewise prohibited, to all under the de- 
grees of Gentlemen and Gentlewomen!" Sta- 
tutes at Large, 34 Hen. VIII. Chap. I.* 

* On the 4th of November, 1547, in his last dying 
speech to Parliament, after complaining of a great lack 
of charity, that the clergy taught one contrary to an- 
other, that almost all men were in variety and discord, 
and that there was little or no preaching truly and sin- 
cerely the word of God, his Majesty proceeds: " You of 
the Clergy — amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set 
out God's word, both by true preaching and good ex- 
ample giving; or else I, whom God hath appointed his 
Vicar, and High Minister here, will see these divisions 
extinct, and these enormities corrected, according to my 
very duty. Although I say the spiritual men be in some 
fault, that charity is not kept among you, yet you of the 
temporalty be not clear and unspotted of malice and en- 

3 



20 

The next of your Apostles whose testimony 
I shall cite is Queen Elizabeth. She had 
been Supreme head of your Church eight 
and twenty years, w r hen she gave the follow- 
ing demonstrations of her experience and vi- 

vy ; for you rail at Bishops, speak scandalously of Priests, 
and rebuke and taunt preachers, both contrary to good 
order and Christian fraternity. If you know surely that 
a Bishop or Preacher erreth, or teacheth perverse doc- 
trine, come and declare it to some of our Council, or to 
us, to whom is committed by God, the High Au- 
thority, to reform and, order such causes and be- 
haviours; and be not judges yourselves, of your 
fantastic opinions, and vain expositions: for in 
such High causes, you may lightly err. And al- 
though you be permitted to read Holy Scripture, and to 
have the Word of God iu your Mother-Tongue, you 
must understand, it is licensed you so to do, only to in- 
form your own consciences, and instruct your children 
and family; and not to dispute and make Scripture a 
milling and ta anting stock, against Priests and Preachers, 
as many light persons do. I am very sorry to know and 
hear, how unreverendly that most precious jewel tha 
Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled, in 
every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning 
and doctrine of the same: and yet I am even as much 
sorry, that the readers of the same, follow it, in doing it, 
so faintly and coldly,. For of this I am sure, that chari- 
ty was never so faint among you, and virtuous and god- 
ly living was never less used, nor God himself, amongst 
Christians, was never less reverenced, honoured, and 
served. Therefore, as I said before, be in charity one 
with another, like brother and brother love; dread and 
fear God; to which I, as your Supreme Head, and So- 
vereign Lord, exhort and require you." (Hall's Chro- 
nicle, Fol. cclxi.) 



21 



gour in the discharge of this arduous office. 
In her speech to parliament, March 29th, 
1582, she says: " There be some fault-find- 
ers with the order of the Clergy, which so 
make a slander to myself and the Church, 
whose over-ruler God hath made me: whose 
negligence cannot be excused, if any sclvisms or 
errors heretical were suffered. Some faults 
and negligences may be, as in all other great 
changes it happeneth ; and what vocation 
without? All which, if you my Lords of the 
Clergy do not amend, I mean to depose you. 
Look ye therefore well to your charges. This 
may be amendment without heedless or open 
exclamations. I am supposed to have many 
studies, but most philosophical. I must yield 
this to be true, that I suppose few (that be 
no professors) have read more. And I need 
not tell you, that I am so simple that I un- 
derstand not, nor so forgetful that I remem- 
ber not; and yet amidst my many volumes I 
hope God's book hath not been my seldomest 
lectures. Take you heed. I see many over- 
bold with God Almighty, making too many 
subtle scannings of his blessed will, as lawyers 
do with human testaments. The presumption 
is so great, as I may not suffer it (yet mind I 
not hereby to animate Romanists — nor tole- 
rate new-fangledness: I mean to guide them 
both by God's holy true rule.") (Parliamen- 
tary History , Vol. IV. p. 278.) To show how 
much she was in earnest, this hypocritical 



22 



murderer, soon after the delivery of this 
speech, sent Mary, Queen of Scotland to the 
block; and cemented her own new-fangled- 
ness by the blood of a Catholic princess, and 
of great numbers of the Catholic clergy. 

I shall at present make no remarks to the 
conceited vanity, the arrogant presumption, 
and outrageous tyranny of these regal paten- 
tees of ecclesiastical supremacy and interpre- 
tational authority; nor of the violent means 
which they employed to convince others that 
they were not to be judges themselves of their 
fantastic opinions, in which they might light- 
ly err. My object is to shew, how easily 
your church was admonished, that in spite of 
your vain pretensions, the Bible alone was 
not a sufficient guide; and that the necessity 
of an Ecclesiastical Supremacy was asserted 
and enforced by your church from its infancy. 
I could easily adduce a thousand instances of 
the same systematic contradiction between 
your professions and practice, from a succes- 
sion of Protestant theologians of all denomi- 
nations, both at home and abroad. But these 
two testimonies, in conjunction with the well- 
pointed satire of Sir Richard Steele, are suf- 
ficient for my purpose. They prove that you 
do not follow the Bible alone. They prove 
that the cry of the Bible alone is unsincere; 
that it is resorted to only to divert the atten- 
tion of simple Protestants from the solid 
grounds of Catholic truth; and to hold out a 



23 



lure to decoy the ignorant and the unwary. 
And they distinctly prove that when you with- 
drew your obedience from the apostolic au- 
thority of the ancient church, you only put 
on your necks the galling yoke of a new and 
more than pontifical supremacy of your own 
creation. It is therefore an undeniable truth, 
that neither you, nor we, nor any others that 
I ever heard or read of, are solely guided by 
the Bible. All admit another conjunct au- 
thority, though we alone are sincere enough 
to avow it. Sincerity looks well in such cir- 
cumstances. 

Others read the Bible as well as you. They 
are equally sincere, and by no means your 
inferiors in penetration and learning. The 
result of their perusal is perhaps a conviction 
that your opinions, though honoured by regal 
and parliamentary approbation, and sanction- 
ed by the encouragement of worldly wealth, 
and a formidable apparatus of penal restric- 
tions, are unsound, erroneous, antiscriptural 
and untenable. Perhaps for one text which 
you quote in favour of your opinions, they 
quote ten against them. This is neither im- 
possible, nor unprecedented. What is to be 
done in this case, where the Bible is itself si- 
lent, and doctors disagree? Here the Bible 
fails you in your utmost need: and without 
some other expedient, religion would be anar- 
chical, and controversy endless. In this ex- 
tremity you begin to learn from experience, 
3* 



24 

what you ought to have learnt from the ori- 
ginal and long continued testimony of our 
church; that some living authority is as ne- 
cessary to decide religious controversies in 
the church, as it is in the state to decide suits 
in common law. Having swerved from the 
doctrine and practice of venerable antiquity, 
you are at last compelled either to revert to 
the ancient rule, or to contrive some new in- 
stitutions of your own. The Bible is here 
quite out of the question. The meaning of 
the Bible is the matter in dispute. The Bi- 
ble cannot speak to interpret itself. Hence 
you adopted as a matter of course, articles as 
a standard of belief, ecclesiastical courts, 
judges and juries, penal enactments and co- 
ercive machinery, to enforce the adoption not 
of the Bible itself, but of your construction 
of the Bible. With these shuffling tricks you 
play off the Biblical game. 

Open your eyes, Mr. Hardman, and con- 
sider this matter with the coolness of reason, 
and not with the delusion of prejudice or pas- 
sion. Perhaps you will then perceive that, 
authority being admitted on all sides, the real 
difference between a Protestant and a Catho- 
lic consists not in this, that the former follows 
the Bible, and the latter the authority of his 
church; but is reduced to this simple ques- 
tion: Whether the Catholic or the Protes- 
tant follows the best and most competent au- 
thority ? Whether the opinions of the mino- 



25 

rity ought to preponderate over the faith of 
the majority of Christians; the modern autho- 
rity over the ancient; the changeable over the 
unchangeable; the insular over the catholic; 
the local over the universal; and, as we judge, 
the human over the divine? Whether the 
Dutchman follows the best authority who 
bows to the decision of the Synod of Dort; the 
Scotchman who adopts the confession of 
Cromwell's divines, and the terminations of 
the General Assembly at Edinburgh; the 
Quaker who follows his own private spirit, 
under the direction of the meeting; the Me- 
thodist who obeys the conference at Leeds or 
Manchester; the Englishman who appeals to 
the Su — y of the Cr — n, resting on the head 
of a man, woman, or child; or the Catholic, 
who with the majority of Christians, of all 
ages and countries, despising the conceits 
and innovating experiments of unauthorised 
individuals, prefers the fixed, unchangeable, 
and divinely appointed authority of Christ's 
ona, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. 
You have taken your choice; and we have 
taken ours. Which of us is most justified in 
his preference, by the rule of wisdom, humi- 
lity, faith, and piety? We can give the most 
substantial reasons for preferring the authori- 
ty of him who said, before a page of the New 
Testament was written: " Hear the Church;" 
to that of a wicked tyrant who chooses to 
usurp the infallibility of apostleship, and set 



26 



forth his own new fangled system of doctrine 
as a standard of Christian belief. The in- 
structed Catholic has surer grounds for his 
belief; and better motives for his practice. 
The authority will be followed in matters of 
faith is not illusory, but infallible; not human, 
but divine. 

Gentlemen, the additional reflections of Mr. 
Cardwell shall form the subject of my next 
letter. 

I am, Sic. John Hardman. 



ON THE 
RULE OF FAITH. 



LETTER V. 

A Winter Evening Dialogue between John 
Hardman and John Cardivell, or Thoughts 
on the Rule of Faith, in a Series of 
Letters, &c. &c. 8lc. 

1. Sentiments of Protestants on the Tendency of Bible 
Societies 3. Speeches of the last Catholic Archbishop 
of York, and the last Catholic Bishop of Chester, in 
Parliament. 

Kirkham, May 24, 1817, 
Gentlemen, 

These arguments of Mr. Cardwell are, in 
my estimation, sound, sensible, and unan- 
swerable. They shew clearly, that no sect 
of Protestants follows the Bible alone; and 
that our pertinacious clamours on this sub- 
ject are sometimes indeed the outcry of fan- 
atical delusion, but more commonly the lan- 
guage of prejudice, artifice, or insincerity. 
They further shew, with a clearness which 
could neither honestly palliate nor sincerely 
deny these five things. First, that the Cuth- 



olics truly venerate the Bible, and piously 
use it for their instruction, their comfort, and 
consolation. Secondly, that they lay no re- 
strictions and prescribe no limitations on the 
perusal of it, but such as reason, faith, and 
piety recommend. Thirdly, that if we except 
enthusiasts, whose eccentricities are no rule 
to the sobermindedness of faith, all Protes- 
tants do admit a church authority in the in- 
terpretation of the Holy Scriptures, no less 
than the Catholics. Fourthly, that the ques- 
tion at issue between the Catholic Church 
and Protestantism is not, as your pamphlet 
boldly asserts, that the Protestant follows the 
Bible, and no other authority than the Bible; 
while the Catholic despises and degrades the 
Bible to follow human authority. And there- 
fore, fifthly, as all churches do in fact and 
necessarily admit authority, the real question 
at issue between them is, what church author- 
ity is most authentic, most competent, most 
consistent, most secure. It is to ascertain 
whether, in all these respects, the Catholic 
Church, or the very best of all the Protes- 
tant churches, be preferable. It is to decide, 
whether the ancient church, or modern insti- 
tutions; whether the unchangeable Church, 
or ever changing sects; whether the Univer- 
sal Church, or local heresies; whether the 
the Apostolic Church, or Luther's substitutes 
be authorised by heaven, and best qualified to 
direct the faith, and give security to the con- 



sciences of sincere Christians in the way of 
truth and salvation. This is, or ought to be 
the substantial object of enquiry, the real 
subject of discussion between us. 

And really Gentlemen, I frankly confess, 
that the weighty arguments of my friend Mr. 
Cardwell have made a deep impression on 
my mind. They have dissipated some of my 
most inveterate prejudices, enlarged my 
knowledge, and qualified my mind to form a 
more correct judgment on the Rule of Faith, 
and on the respective claims of the Catholic 
Church and her competitors to be regarded 
as the true Church of Christ. They have 
persuaded me that the Catholic is not that ig- 
norant, foolish, and Bible-hating creature, 
who, according to your representation, prefers 
the opinions of men to the express word of 
God, and who can give no reason why he 
believes this, or practises that, but that he 
has at least plausible motives for his partiality 
and preference, and a is ready always to give 
an answer to every man, that asketh him a 
a reason of the hope that is in him." 

1. Desirous of still prolonging our con- 
versation, I made some observations on Mr. 
Cardwell's arguments. I regard not, said I, 
the opinions or complaints of Henry VIII. or 
Queen Elizabeth, respecting the abuses which 
sprung from an injudicious reading of the 
Bible. I despise the tyrannical statutes of 
those ecclesiastical despots. They lived in 



the ferment of the Reformation, before men's 
minds were settled, and before correct notions 
prevailed. We live in an enlightened age. 
The harmlessness, the utility, the obligation 
and necessity of all men reading the Bible, 
are now universally admitted. All parties 
emulate each other in promoting the efforts of 
the Bible Society to furnish every individual 
with the pure rule of divine truth, undebased 
by the notes and comments of fallible men. 
They all consider this is the surest, the only 
way to disseminate religious truth. None 
can contest the wisdom and policy of their 
institution, but those whose opinions are at 
variance with the Scripture. 

Mr. Cardwell resumed, — I turned your at- 
tention to the two first heads of your Church, 
Henry VIII. and his daughter, both to point 
out the date of its origin, and to show you 
how sternly your church was admonished, in 
her earliest infancy, that the Bible alone was 
not sufficient either to fix her faith, or pre- 
serve her existence. But she had been ad- 
monished of the same truth in every succeed- 
ing generation, by the voice of her prelates, 
the zeal of her clergy, and the authority of 
the legislature. This I could easily substan- 
tiate, by a reference to the writings of your 
divines, the proceedings of Convocations, the 
decisions in the ecclesiastical courts, and va- 
rious parts of the statute books. But these 
I shall omit, and come at once to what is 



passing before our own eyes. If it be a 
scandal to assert, that the Bible ought to be 
read with some precaution; and that its ope- 
ration on ignorant and fanatical minds is more 
likely to prove hurtful than beneficial, your 
church must now be content to take its share 
of the reproach. The Bible Society, which 
originated about thirteen years ago among the 
Dissenters, and was subsequently encouraged 
by the patronage and wealth of many distin- 
guished members of your communion, has 
within these few years excited much attention, 
and voluminous discussion. The result is 
remarkable. It has spread a serious alarm 
among the watchmen of your Holy City. It 
has taught them the necessity of changing 
their language. It has led them to abandon 
their once favourite and fanatical outcry of 
the Bible alone, with which they were wont 
to insult and triumph over Popery, and to 
adopt in their turn the good sense, the lan- 
guage and arguments of Popery, as a shield 
of self-defence. The Catholic Church alone 
is steady in her principles, and always con- 
sistent with herself. Your clergy, Mr Hard- 
man, though less changeable than many oth- 
ers, may with propriety assume for their motto; 

Tempora mutantur et nos ami a mm- in Mis. — 

Changed arc the times, and so arc we with them. 

One of your prelates sr<> s danger in the dis- 
tribution of the IJible without the accompany- 



ing interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, 
the Prayer Book, and Catechism. Others 
descry danger without the guidance of the 
Homilies, and other acrimonious tracts against 
Catholics and Dissenters, Nay, a few months 
ago the Archdeacon of Huntingdon, in his 
primary Visitation Charge, has given a grad* 
uated scale of the distribution of Bibles and 
the increase of felons, for some years past; 
and has proved, or at least attempted to prove> 
that in the same ratio that Bibles are distrib- 
uted, felons increase. They tell us, that the 
Scriptures are full of passages hard to be un- 
derstood: that it is dangerous to put them 
into the hands of the common people without 
comments: that the reading of the Scriptures 
by the prejudiced and the ignorant leads to 
schisms and heresy: "If any preach any 
other gospel unto you than that which we 
have preached unto you, let him be accursed." 
(Gal. i. 9:) and that those who thus corpo- 
rate with the Dissenters, should ponder well 
the words of St. John: " If there come any 
unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive 
him not into your house, neither bid him God 
speed." (2 John i. 10.) It is suprising, but 
true. In reading some of the late publica- 
tions of your prelates and clergy, we almost 
fancy that we are reading the Catholic con- 
tro^ertists of former days. We find them 
employing against the Dissenters the same 
sentiments, the same arguments, and the 



and New Testament, while the latter has 
some peculiar to itself. Its extreme concise- 
ness, its eliptical phraseology, frequently dar- 
ken the meaning, which is still further in- 
creased by Hebrew idioms, with which the 
Greek of the New Testament abounds. Now 
all these difficulties, which the learned reader 
must encounter in the original languages of 
the Old and New Testament, are faithfully 
transfused into our authorized version, while 
many others naturally spring up from the im- 
perfection of translation. Accordingly it is 
only by long and severe study that men of 
the best understandings, enlarged by multifa- 
rious reading, can acquire an adequate know- 
ledge of the sacred writings The Bible 

ought to be approached even by the wise and 
learned, with an humble sense of their own 
limited capacities." The author then pro- 
ceeds to show, that reading these sacred 
writings without due precautions produced a 
variety of mischievous sects, and even were 
made a pretence for rejecting the Messiah 
among the ancient Jews; and that the same 
cause produced effects equally lamentable 
among the primitive Christians, some of 
whom, says St. Paul, wrested the scriptures to 
J heir own destruction. u Yet these men," 
says our author, " who thus perverted the 
sense of St. Paul, and that of the other in- 
spired writers, were cotemporaries of the 
Apostles, and spoke the language of the New 
1' 



10 

Testament, and Septuagint version. Asia- 
tics themselves, they were familiar with orien- 
tal idioms and oriental images, with the figu- 
rative style, and bold amplification of eastern 
nations. And shall it be said that illiterate 
peasants, distant two thousand miles from the 
country, and nearly two thousand years from 
the age of the Apostles, will not grossly per- 
vert the meaning of the sacred oracles, read- 
ing them without oral or written explanation, 
through the medium of an English version of 
two hundred years standing, scrupulously li- 
teral, and therefore retaining all the difficul- 
ties of the original, and superadding others? 

" The experience and observation of man- 
kind lead to the same conclusion, that the 
scriptures are of themselves too obscure for 
the generality of mankind. This the history 
of the Church in all ages, but particularly 
since the reformation, abundantly testifies. 

" In opposition to the Church of Rome, the 
first reformers loudly asserted the right of 
private judgement in expounding the Scrip- 
tures . . . but anxious to emancipate the peo- 
ple from the authoity of the Roman Pontiff, 
they proclaimed it without explanation or re- 
striction, and the consequences were dreadful. 
Impatient to undermine the foundation of papal 
jurisdiction, they maintained it without any 
limitation, asserting that every individual 
whatever had an undoubted right to explain 
the Scriptures for himself. The principle,. 



. 11 

now extended too far, was no longer tenable; 
so that it became necessary to fortify it with 
another, namely, that the Bible is an easy 
book, level to all capacities, and that the 
greatest perspicuity is the necessary charac- 
ter of a divine revelation. But neither sin- 
gle nor combined, are these principles capa- 
pable of resisting any serious attack, £1/) 

" The private judgement of Muncer dis- 
covered in Scripture, that titles of nobility 
and large estates were impious encroachments 
on the natural equality of the faithful, and 
invited his followers to examine the Scriptures, 
whether these things were so. They examined, 
praised God, and proceeded with fire and 
sword to the extirpation of the ungodly, and 
the seizure of their property. Private judge- 
ment also, thought it had discovered in the 
Bible, that established laws were standing 
restraints on Christian liberty, and that the 
elect of God were incapable of sinning. 
John of Leyden, laying down his thimble, 
and taking up his Bible, suprised the City of 
Munster, at the head of a rabble of frantic 
enthusiasts, proclaimed himself King of Zion, 
and took unto himself fourteen wives at once, 
affirming that polygamy was Christian liber- 
ty, and the privilege of the. saints. But if the 
Munitions madness of foreign peasants, inter- 
preting the Bible for themselves, be afflicting 
to the friends of humanity and rational piety, 
the history of England, during a considerable 



12 



part of the seventeenth century, offers little 
to console them. In that place and period, 
countless enthusiasts sprung up successively, 
and contemporaneously, endued with extrav- 
agant doctrines and noxious propensities, in 
various degrees, from the wild ravings of Fox, 
to the methodical madness of Barclay; from 
the formidable fanaticism of Cromwell, to the 
drivelling impiety of Praise-God-Barebones. 
Piety, reason, and common sense, seemed to 
be driven from the world, to make room for 
for canting jargon, religious frenzy, and fie- 
ry zeal. All quoted Scripture, all made pre- 
tensions to illuminations, visions, revelations, 
and illapses of the spirit; and the pretensions 
of all were equally well founded. The expe- 
diency of abolishing the clerical and regal 
functions, was strenously maintained; priests 
being the servants of Satan, kings the dele- 
gates of the Whore of Babylon, and both in- 
consistent with the kingdom of the Redeemer, 
These zealots denounced learning as a 
heathenish invention, and the universities as 
seminaries of Antichristian impiety. The 
sanctity of his office was no protection to the 
prelate; the sacredness of majesty no defence 
to the king; both were scoffed at, denounced, 
and finally murdered by merciless fanatics, 
whose only book was the Bible without note 
or comment. At this time, prayer and preach- 
ing, and reading the Scriptures, were at their 
height: every man prayed, every man preach- 



13 



ed, every man read, and no man listened. 
Scripture authority was pleaded for every 
atrocity. The ordinary business of life was 
transacted in scripture language. In scrip- 
ture phrase were discussed the internal state 
of the nation, and its external relations. In 
the language of Scripture conspiracies were 
formed, proscriptions planned, treasons hatch- 
ed, and by scripture authorities they were 
not only justified but consecrated. These 
historical facts have often astonished the good 
and startled the pious. Engrossed by such 
feelings, the reader too often overlooks their 
awful moral, that the Bible without note or 
comment is unfit for the perusal of the rude 
and illiterate. 

" Its doctrines, never contrary to reason, 
are sometimes above it: its truths, generally 
deep, are sometimes mysterious, but always 
important. So that the character and mat- 
ter of the sacred volume afford an additional 
proof of the impropriety of placing it indis- 
criminately in the hands of men whose minds 
are necessarily rude and uncultivated. 

" Man must cultivate the ground for his 
corporeal, the mind for his intellectual food. 
His proficiency in evejy science is propor- 
tioned to the skill of his instructor, the time, 
the toil, and talents expended in the study of 
it. In literature and arts, it is the same. 
In every trade, occupation, and profession, 
manual dexterity, or intellectual excellence, 



14 



can be acquired only by previous discipline, 
and long babits of bodily, or mental action. 
But are the deep study, patient investigation, 
and the vigorous exercise of reason, necessary 
to the attainment of all human knowledge; 
and will the knowledge of ourselves as fallen 
creatures, as moral and reprehensible agents, 
— will the knowledge of God, of his attributes, 
of his will, of the doctrines he inculcates, of 
the duties he prescribes, of his precepts, pro- 
mises, exhortations, denunciations, and of his 
whole scheme of redemption, will all this 
knowledge — deep, various, and sublime as it 
is, — be extracted from the bible by ignorant 
rustics and mechanics, unassisted by oral or 
written elucidation? It would be highly de- 
sirable that the peasantry of England under- 
stood and respected the laws of their country 
more than they do at present; yet no society 
has yet started up with the avowed object of 
dispensing among them cheap editions of 
Blackstone, or Coke's Littleton, without note 
or comment. A competent knowledge of 
natural philosophy, astronomy, metaphysics, 
and political ecomony, could not fail to hu- 
manize their minds; yet no sagacious refor- 
mer has yet come forward with a proposal for 
circulating among them Newton, Laplace, 
Locke, Smith, or Stewart, without note or 
comment. Why ? because these books would 
not be read, or read to some useless or per- 
nicious purpose. This applies with infinitely 



t,5 

greater force to the Bible; for as it is the 
best of all books, its perversion is proportion- 
ably dangerous. Beware then, how you en- 
trust the Bible, indiscriminately, to the multi- 
tude, and then abandon them to the licentious 
glosses of their own wild imaginations. 

" Oral instruction would be used to a con- 
siderable extent, in teaching them Christiani- 
ty. Then oral instruction should be aided 
by summary views of the doctrines of our re- 
ligion, plainly written, clearly arranged, and 
extracted from the Scriptures by men of 
sound heads and honest hearts. Interesting 
narratives, grounded on scripture history, 
written with clearness and elegance, and 
leading to some useful moral, or illustrating 
some important doctrine, should be put into 
their hands. Select extracts from the Scrip- 
tures themselves, with short explanatory notes, 
and an occasional paraphrase, may be judi- 
ciously introduced into the poor man's libra- 
ry. If he has the Bible, such works may 
guard him against the wild licentiousness of 
interpretation; if he has not, they may make 
him a meek and peaceable Christian, instead 
of a turbulent and dangerous enthusiast. He 
cannot use, he must abuse the Bible. Trust not 
to his own rt'dson, his private judgment } he has 
none; or, which is sufficient lor my argument, 
lie 1ms not enough, and therefore the Bible 
should not be industriously put into his hands, 
because it is too obscure for his rude under- 



16 



standing. This is the conclusion to which 
we are equally hurried, whether we consider 
the antiquity of the sacred writings; their fi- 
gurative language; their oriental idioms; their 
highly diversified style; their subject matter; 
the important ends answered by their obscu- 
rity; the analogy of the divine dispensations; 

THE NUMEROUS SECTS INTO WHICH CHRISTIANS 

have been rent; the torrents of fanaticism, 
which have swept away civil and religious 
establishments, while all these sects, and all 
these fanatics, appeal to Scripture for a vin- 
dication of their opinions, and a justification 
of their atrocities. 

" The bulk of mankind must be content to 
glean up their information from others. They 
cannot approach the great sources of know- 
ledge. They must receive the most import- 
ant truths, as in medicine, law, morality, 
physics, and mathematics, at second hand — 
on the authority of those who derive them 
from the fountain head. With respect to 
Christian knowledge, the same process has, 
in general, been observed; and where it has 
been departed from in any considerable de- 
gree, society has been shaken to its centre. 

" The great triumphs of Christianity over 
Heathenism, Idolatry, and Infidelity, have 
been atchieved, in all ages, by preaching the 
Scripture, by expounding the Scripture, by 
pressing its momentous truths, with the clear- 
ness and energy of oral illustration, on the 



17 



attention of a reluctant, and unbelieving 
world. But no history records any conside- 
rable conquest over Heathenism or Mahome- 
tanism, by the mere instrumentality of the 
Bible; — a fact strongly corroborative of the 
position, ' that the Scriptures are hard to be 
understood.' The commission which the 
Apostles received from their Divine Master 
was: c Go, preach the Gospel to every 
creature:' not a word about circulating the 
Bible with or without note or comment. And 
though the Scriptures were translated into 
various languages, in the early ages of the 
Christian Church, we have reason to think 
they were designed for the use of believers, 
not of unbelievers — for persons already con- 
verted to Christianity, not for those who yet 
remained to be converted. If the circulation 
of the Bible were the right mode of convert- 
ing the Heathen, may we not be permitted to 
suppose, that, in the arrangement of Provi- 
dence, the invention of printing would have 
preceded the promulgation of Christianity, as 
this circulation might thus be cheaply, easily, 
and rapidly effected: especially, as God could 
have easily annexed miraculous powers to the 
sacred volume, as to t\\r, persons of the Apos- 
tles. Hence it can scarcely be doubted that 
preaching is the appointed way lor the con- 
version of infidels. 

" In truth, it is principally because the 
Scripture's are very voluminous, and very 






18 

difficult, that a necessity arose of instituting 
a distinct order of men, prepared by long dis- 
cipline, and severe study, for the important 
duty of collecting, exhibiting, expounding, 
and illustrating the doctrines and precepts of 
the sacred writings. But let the public be 
once convinced, that tinkers and draymen are 
qualified to search the Scriptures, to over- 
come their difficulties, and comprehend their 
doctrines, and all respect for the clerical or- 
der is at that moment at an end. In point of 

fact, accordingly we find that the more enthu- 

• • • 

siastic sects either have no spiritual teachers 

at all, or none regularly educated for the mi- 
nistry. The Scriptures, they conceive, have 
no difficulties for them: they do not stand in 
need of human interpreters; they derive their 
knowledge from a higher and purer source 
than any earthly teacher. Nay some enthu- 
siasts, soaring above their fellows, or rather 
arguing more correctly, have rejected the Bi- 
ble itself, as unnecessary to men favoured 
with immediate revelation. 

" But were the Bible as easy as it is diffi- 
cult, still it would be a work of charity to con- 
dense its doctrines into a short and well ar- 
ranged system, and spare the bewildered pea- 
sant the labour of pushing his researches 
through so vast a volume, and such multifari- 
ous matter, for the purpose of collecting, and 
arranging for himself. It is cruel to set him 
adrift, in his own littte bark, on the immense 



19 



ocean of divine revelation, without star or com- 
pass to guide him. An educated man, unac- 
quainted with revelation, may obtain a clearer 
view of the whole Christian scheme from a 
small duodecimo volume, read in a few hours, 
than he can from the Bible in as many months. 
This holds incomparably stronger with re- 
spect to the uneducated peasant: from such a 
work he would derive more religious know- 
ledge in a few days, than he could from the 
Bible during his whole life. 

" The truth is, the Bible is already too 
much read by Protestant peasants, and too 
much neglected by Protestant gentlemen. 
Among the latter, accordingly, we find that 
honour is too frequently substituted for mo- 
rality, etiquette for religion, gaming for re- 
flection, and gallantry for devotion. The 
Sportman's Calendar is read; the novel de- 
voured; the play admired; the Bible merely 
tolerated. Thus, religious ignorance, which 
should only be found among the beasts that 
perish, rises in spite of the grossness of its 
nature, into the highest ranks of fashion, from 
which it sheds its blighting influence on all 
the subordinate classes. What a perverse 
and inconsistent being is man! Those who 
can understand the Bible, seldom read it, and 
content themselves with recommending it to 
those who cannot; while those to whom it is 
recommended, often read it with avidity, sel- 






20 



dom understand it, and generally pervert it to 
their own destruction!" 

This sagacious observer of " the signs of 
times" is not afraid to avow his opinions. He 
thinks that the labours of the Bible Society 
will produce at home less fruit than is expect- 
ed, or fruit in abundance, but of a poisonous 
quality ; and will be almost unproductive 
abroad; that it maybe fairly doubted whether 
their distribution of Bibles will, of itself, pro- 
mote, in any sensible degree, the cause of re- 
ligion and virtue. He calls upon the society 
to pause, and calmly reconsider their plan of 
religious instruction; lest instead of pure 
Christianity, they circulate hypocrisy, fana- 
ticism, and impious delusion among the lower 
classes of society; that to instruct the igno- 
rant, is much more difficult than to put Bibles 
or Testaments into their hands. u That the 
Bible," says he, " is adapted to the meanest 
understanding — an opinion taken up at first 
without due examination — is still retained, 
because men are disinclined to submit to a 
severe scrutiny the truth of an opinion long 
and fondly cherished. We think it harsh, to 
be called upon to renounce opinions for which 
our ancestors had once strenuously contend- 
ed. If their opinions be right, we maintain 
them because they are so; if wrong, we vindi- 
cate them still, on a principle of honour. Per- 
haps the spirit of opposition to Papal Rome still 



21 

operates in some degree." "To me it ap- 
pears," continues Mr. O'Callaghan, " that 
the immediate tendency of the Bible Society 
is to empty the churches and fill the conven- 
ticles; and its remote tendency, to put down 
the former altogether. The current of pub- 
lic opinion has already set in against the Es- 
tablished Church ; and the Bible Society, 
whether the prelates will see it or not, is un- 
questionably an engine for its detruction." 

The sentiments of this Protestant clergy- 
man, expressed in the passages which I have 
read to you from this pamphlet, are precisely 
the sentiments which the Catholic Church 
has ever entertained. At the present day, 
this Catholic language is, with more confi- 
dence than consistency or prudence, pretty 
frequently adopted by your divines. They 
have at length learnt from experience what 
they ought to have learnt from the testimony 
of the Catholic Church, that the Bible alone, 
interpreted by private judgment, is not the 
way to unity, integrity, and stability of faith. 
They find in their own perplexities the truth 
of what we have always told them, that the 
Bible thus interpreted is the source of a con- 
tinual succession of new sects and new doc- 
trines. They are now as fully convinced, as 
the Fathers of the Council of Trent, that the 
Bible is not the sole rule of faith, nor indeed 
the fittest book for all sorts of readers: that 
the true interpretation of the Bible is not less 
ft* 



22 



necessary than the letter of the Bible: that 
some doctrines are true, though twenty texts 
may be quoted against them; and some doc- 
trines false, though twenty texts may be cited 
in their favour: and that the silent Bible can- 
not, in all cases, qualify the sincere inquirer 
to discriminate with certainty between reli- 
gious error and religious truth. Thus the 
present generation of Protestants has surren- 
dered and co-operates with us in demolishing 
the main principles for which their ancestors 
so strenuously contended; and growing sober, 
has at length been compelled, in opposing 
heresy, schism, and biblical delusion, to adopt 
the language and arguments which the Ca- 
tholic Church has always employed against 
those who stray from the truth of her commu- 
nion. In a Catholic, this is consistency; in a 
Protestant, a phenomenon. Certainly it must 
occur to the writers who employ this kind of 
reasoning, that they invariably condemn the 
conduct of the authors of the reformation, and 
overturn the very foundation on which their 
own Church is erected. Had Luther, Cran- 
mer, and Jewel, entertained these rational 
and just sentiments, they never would have 
forsaken the faith and communion of the Ca- 
tholic Church, to form new systems of reli- 
gion according to their own partial, contract- 
ed, and often fanatical view of obscure texts, 
but would have continued to belong to the 
" One Fold and the One Shepherd." 



23 

But, Mr. Hardman, at this late hour it is 
time to close our discussion. This pamphlet, 
which you have brought to me with an air of 
defiance, lays itself open to many other ob- 
jections, into which I forbear to enter at pre- 
sent. Had you applied to Mr. Sherburn, 
Mr. Dawson, Mr. Marsh, or any of our neigh- 
bouring priests, whose abilities and learning 
better qualify them for the discussion of topics 
of this nature, they would have given you 
text for text, and argument for argument; and 
would have triumphantly repelled every at- 
tack which you could make on our Church. 
In my plain and humble way, appealing ra- 
ther to the observations of good sense, than 
to a multiplicity of obscure and disputed texts, 
which are too difficult for you and me, I have 
demolished the foundation of your pamphlet, 
and the fall of the superstructure follows of 
course. What effects the invective of this 
and similar pamphlets may produce on the 
minds of simple and wavering Protestants, 
who are better able to count texts of Scrip- 
ture, than discover the true sense of them, I 
shall not pretend to determine. But I can 
assure you, that the faith of a Catholic is 
built on a foundation too solid to be shaken 
by volumes of textual sophistry. In spite of 
your groundless clamours, and uncharitable;, 
as well as unreasonable abuse of Popery, it 
will ever be the Catholic's glory, delight, and 
comfort, to hear that Church, which W the pil- 






24 



lav and the ground of the truth, and to follow 
the Romish injunction of that Papist, St. 
Paul: " Brethren, stand fast, and hold the 

TRADITIONS WHICH YE HAVE BEEX TAUGHT, 
WHETHER BY WORD, OR OUR EPISTLE." 

Mr. Hardman, I have only one further ob- 
servation to make, or rather to repeat. Think 
not that none have searched the Scriptures, 
but those whose faith has suffered shipwreck 
in the search. I love and venerate the Bible. 
I have perused it often. I have read some 
chapters of it almost daily, from my youth. 
In antiquity, in sublimity, in variety of beau- 
ty, in holiness, in authority, in the power of 
enlightening the understanding and improving 
the heart of the humble faithful, no other 
book is comparable to it. But still, indepen- 
dently of other considerations, the errors and 
delusions of every Protestant sect are to me 
a demonstration, that it is only then a safe 
and sure guide, when its obscurities are 
cleared up, and its true sense and meaning 
declared hy the unerring voice of Apostolical 
Tradition, and the interpretative authority of 
the Catholic Church. 

3. My friend paused, and I replied: I 
thank you, Mr. Cardwell, for the pleasure 
which I have received from this conversation. 
It has done me good. It has given me abun- 
dant and interesting materials for thought and 
reflection. You have proved to my satisfac- 
tion, that the author of this pamplet is both 



24 



ignorant and bewildered; that he is not a 
member either of your church or ours; but an 
artful and puritanical enemy to both. You 
have convinced me that he is a wild interpre- 
ter of the Bible, who gives his own crude 
construction of insulated texts for the genuine 
meaning of Holy Writ. But though you have 
triumphantly evinced, against the main prin- 
ciple of our author, that the Bible is, only in 
a limited sense, the Rule of Faith, you have 
left some parts of his pamphlet untouched. 
What will you say to his Letters on the Su- 
premacy of the Pope, Transubstantiation, 
Prayer to the Saints, or for the Dead, the 
Antichristian Apostacy, and the Papal Anti- 
christ? To all these, said Mr. Cardwell, I 
shall at present say nothing. These may be 
the subject of future consideration and dis- 
cussion. In fact, the Letters on these sub- 
jects contain nothing new — nothing but errors 
and misrepresentations as old as the age of 
Luther, and objections which our divines 
have a thousand times refuted. The argu- 
ments are all grounded on the author's igno- 
rance of our doctrine, and his misrepresenta- 
tion of the Scripture. I have already refuted 
them in their principle 5 and at the approach 
of midnight, you will excuse me from entering 
upon the easy but lengthened task of refuting 
them in detail. 

On these miscellaneous topics 1 will, at 
present, only give you the sentiments el' two 






26 



eminent English Prelates of the archdiocess 
and diocess in which you and I live — the 
Most Rev. Dr. Nicholas Heath, the last Ca- 
tholic Archbishop of York, and the Right 
Rev. Dr. Cuthbert Scott, his Suffragan, and 
the last Catholic Bishop of Chester. These 
learned and virtuous Prelates, with all the 
other Bishops of England in their places in 
the House of Lords, February 18th, 1558, 
the first year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
when the bill for conferring the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Supremacy and the Headship of the 
Church, on a woman, was before the House, 
and the subject of warm and awful debate, 
unanimously and strenuously opposed the in- 
troduction of these innovations: and all the 
Bishops of England, except one, conscien- 
tiously and honourably sacrificed their epis- 
copal sees and palaces, their seats in the 
House of Lords, their honours, their reve- 
nues, their personal comforts, and, in the 
case of some of them, their personal liberty, 
rather than exchange the sterling truths of 
the Catholic Creed for errors coined within 
their own remembrance. The speeches of 
the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of 
Chester, in these debates are preserved by 
Strype, and inserted in the Parliamentary 
History. (Strype, vol. i. in Append. Pari. 
Hist. vol. iii. p. 379.") I was reading them 
when you favored me with this visit. Both 
are long and argumentative. I shall select 



27 



only the warning voice of our Primate, and 
an extract from the arguments of our Bishop. 
The Archbishop of York thus warns the 
House of Lords: hi By the relinquishing and 
forsaking of the See of Rome, we must for- 
sake and fly from these four things. First, 
we must forsake and fly from all general 
Councils. Secondly, we must fly from all 
Canonical and Ecclesiastical Laws of the 
Church of Christ. Thirdly, from the judg- 
ment of all* other Christians. Fourthly, and 
lastly, we must forsake and fly from the Uni- 
>f Christ's Church; and, by leaping out of 
Peter's ship, hazard ourselves to be over- 
whelmed and drowned in the waters of schism, 
sects and divisions. It is much to be lament- 
ed, that we, the inhabitants of this realm, are 
much more inclined to raise up the errors and 
sects of ancient and condemned heretics, 
than to follow the approved doctrine of the 
most catholic and learned Fathers of Christ's 
Church. In the relinquishing and forsaking 
of that Church, as a malignant church, the 
inhabitants of this realm shall be forced to 
seek further for another gospel of Christ, 
other doctrine, faith and sacraments, than we 
hitherto have received, which shall breed 
such a schism and error in faith, as was ne- 
ver in any Christian realm; and therefore, of 
your wisdom's worthy consideration, and ma- 
turely to be provided for, before you pass this 
Act of Supremacy. 5) 



in 

The Bishop of Chester thus argues against 
the same Bill: " At this present there be 
abroad, in Christendom, thirty-tour sundry 
sects of opinions, whereof never one agreeth 
with another, and all differ from the Catholic 
Church. And every one of these sects do 
say and affirm constantly, that their profes- 
sion and doctrine is builded upon Christ, al- 
ledging Scripture for the same. And they all 
and every of them, thus challenging Christ 
to be their foundation by Scripture, how shall 
any man know to which of them he may safe- 
ly give credit, and so obey and follow? I 
trust your Lordships do see, that for unity 
and concord in faith and religion to be ob- 
served and continued in the Church, our Sa- 
viour Christ hath appointed one Head or Go- 
vernor, that is, to wit, Peter and his succes- 
sors, whose faith he promised should never 
decay, as we see manifestly it hath not indeed. 
And for those men that write and speak 
against his authority,' if their writings and 
doings be well considered, they shall appear 
to be such as small credit or none is to be 
given unto, in matters of weight, such as this. 
For whoso readeth the third chapter of the 
second Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, may 
see them there lively described with their 
doings. And specially one sentence therein 
may be applied and verified of them most 
justly: that is, always learning and never com- 
ing to the knowledge of truth. For as we see 



29 



them vary amongst themselves one from an- 
other, so no one of them doth agree with him- 
self, in matters of religion, two years toge- 
ther. And as they be gone from the sure 
rock and stay of Christ's Church, so do they 
reel and waver in their doctrine, wherein no 
certainty nor stay can be found. Whereof 
St. Paul doth admonish us, in the person of 
his scholar Timothy, to be constant in doc- 
trine and religion, and not to follow such 
men. But as for thee, saith St. Paul, speak- 
ing to every Christian man, continue in those 
things which thou hast learned, and which he 
credited unto thee, knowing of whom thou hast 
learned them. In which words he moveth 
every man to consider not only his religion 
and doctrine, but also, or rather, the school- 
master of whom he learned the same. For 
of the knowledge, constancy, and worthiness 
of the schoolmaster, or teacher, may the doc- 
trines, taught by him, be known to be good' 
and sound, or otherwise. 

" Now, if a man should ask of these men 
in this realm, which dissent from the Catholic 
Church, not only in this point of supremacy, 
but also in divers of the chief mysteries of 
our faith, of whom they learned this doctrine 
which they hold and teach, they must needs 
answer, that they learned it of the Germans. 
Then we may demand of them again, of whom 
he Germans did learn it? Whereunto they 
nust answer, that they learned it of Luther 
6 



30 

Well, then, of whom did Luther learn it? 
Whereunto he shall answer himself, in his 
book that he wrote, De Missa angularly where 
he saith, that such things as he teacheth 
against the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament 
of the Altar, he learned of Satan, the Devil. 
At whose hands, it is likely, he did also re- 
ceive the rest of his doctrine. 

" Then here be two points diligently to be 
noted. First, that this doctrine is not filly 
years old; for no man taught it before Luther. 
And secondarily, that Luther doth acknow- 
ledge and confess the devil to be his school- 
master in divers points of his doctrine. So 
.that if men would diligently mind St. Paul's 
words, they would refuse this preverse and 
wicked doctrine, knowing from whom it came. 

" But if they ask us of whom we learned 
our doctrine, we answer them that we learn- 
ed it of our forefathers in the Catholic Church, 
which hath in it continuedly the Holy Spirit 
of God for a ruler and governor. And, again, 
if they ask of whom our fathers learned the 
same, we say of their forefathers within the 
same church. And so we gradually ascend 
in possession of our doctrine, from age to 
age, unto the Apostle Peter, unto whom, as 
St. Cyprian saith, our Saviour Christ did be- 
take his sheep to be fed, and upon whom he 
founded his church. 

" So that now we may be bold to stand in 
our doctrine and religion against our adver- 



31 



saries, seeing that theirs is not yet fifty years 
old, and ours above fifteen hundred years 
old. They have for authority and commen- 
dation of their religion, Luther and his school- 
master before mentioned: we have for ours 
St. Peter and his master, Christ." 

I then retired. I shall, Gentlemen, in my 
next letter, conclude this correspondence, 
with stating my reflections on the subject 
matter of our conversation. 

I am, &c John Hardman. 



Hymn to St. Stephen, the first Martyr. 
Hail thou, in yet the infant Church, 

The earliest martyr crown'd! 
Far as she now extends o'er earth, 

Great saint, thy name's renown'd. 
Before their court thou'rt dragg'd, that late 

Condemn'd thy Lord divine: 
When lo! thy harden'd foes beheld, 

Thy angel-visage, shine. 
How, as in thee truth's spirit spoke, 

The law thou didst expound! 
How did yonr skill, their wisdom vain, 

Their learning proud confound! 
Cut to the heart the stubborn race, 

With each foul passion fir'd; 
Indignant, e'en their teeth they gnash, 

By demon hate inspired. 



» 

To whom thou saidst: " In vision clear 

M The op'ning heav'ns I see, 
M And at his Sire's risht hand enthron'd, 

u That Jesns preach'd by me." 
Stopping their ears with one loud voice, 

Against thee they exclaim; 
And furious rushing, drag thee forth, 

As one they'd heard blaspheme. 
The stony tempest while so fierce 

They 're levelling full at thee, 
M This sin, Lord, lay not to their charge," 

Thoust pray'd on bended knee. 
Then straight mto thy Jesus' hands 

Thy sonl thou didst commend 
And thus his valiant champion here 

Thy course didst nobly end. 
O thou, who couldst, so like thy Lord, 

E'en for thy murd'rers pray! 
Obtain that to our enemies we 

Such mercy may display! 
And ever with undaunted zeal, 

Like thee, the truth maintain: 
Nor blush to own what reas'ners proud 

And infidels disdain! 
To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 

One God in Persons three, 
Let creatures join to pour their praise 

Through all eternity! 



ON THE 
RULE OP FAITH. 



LETTER VI. 

A Winter Evening Dialogue between John 
Hardman and John Cardivell, or Thoughts 
on the Rule of Faith, in a Series of 
Letters, &c. &.c. &c. 

Mr. Hardman's subsequent Reflections and Researches, 
which lead to a happy Result. 

Kirkham, May 24, 1817 
Gentlemen, 

Discussion is a useful practice, where the 
discovery of truth is important: and it is a 
most salutary expedient, where ignorance or 
prejudice intercepts the knowledge of relig- 
ious truth. For this reason, I thank you, 
Gentlemen, for your pamphlet. I am grate- 
ful to you, not for what your book has done, 
hut for what it has caused to be done. I no 
longer, indeed, consider it as that sound and 
unanswerable refutation of Popery, which my 
ignorance first took it to be. I am now sen- 
sible that it has neither reformed my prejudi- 
ces, nor increased the sphere of my knowl- 
6* 



edge. But though it has not been the 
efficient cause of either, I am happy to as- 
sure you that it has been the instrumental 
cause of both, by introducing me to this dis- 
cussion with my friend Mr. CardweH. 

Unaccustomed as I have been to converse 
with Catholics, or to read their books on re- 
ligious subjects, and, like my Protestant neigh- 
bours, taught, from my infancy, to consider 
Popery as a false, unscriptural, and immor- 
al system of religion, fit only to be mention- 
ed with abhorrence, and rejected without en- 
quiry, I thought, with all the confidence of 
ignorance, and the pride of a fancied superi- 
ority, that the contest between the ancient 
Church and the modern sects of the Refor- 
mation, had been finally settled, and clearly 
decided in our favour. I had been led to be- 
lieve, that our divines had refuted all the tenets 
of the Papists, and left them without the 
shadow of a reply. For many years I had 
been told by our late vicar in his quarterly 
sermon, that their religion was earthly, sensual , 
devilish, which none could profess, but those 
who obstinately shut their eyes to the light, 
and whose minds were given up to a strong 
delusion to believe a lie. This I had often 
been told with an air of authority, and I was 
simple enough to believe it. I now see the 
contrary. Mr. Cardwell's conversation has 
brought me to a more correct mode of think- 
ing. It has opened my eyes to see that de- 



lusion, inconsistency, and danger, are on 
our side, and that truth, stability, and security, 
are theirs. During the progress of our friend- 
ly discussion, I could perceive my protestant 
prejudices fall away one by one; and I felt 
my reason compelled, by the sensible obser- 
vations and weighty arguments of Mr. Card- 
well, to abandon, one after another, every 
weapon which I had chosen as the instru- 
ment of my attack on the Catholic Church. 
At first, I was surprised and mortified. I af- 
terwards began to suspect that I was really 
the advocate of the weaker cause. On my 
return home from Mr. Cardwell's, my mind 
was fully occupied in revolving the subjects 
of our conversation. When I arrived at my 
own house, the family, who are early to bed, 
and early to rise, had retired to rest. Every 
thing was silent. The fire was burnt low, 
and only gave a glimmering light. As I felt 
an inclination to meditate, rather than a pro- 
pensity to sleep, I pulled your pamphlet out 
of my pocket, and put it into the fire. It soon 
revived the dying embers, restored a comfort- 
able blaze, and cast a cheerful light through 
the room. I then sat down, and reconsider- 
ed your Letters to Mr. Sherburn, and Mr. 
Cardwell's reflections on them. Many new 
ideas burst upon my mind. In my former 
Letters I informed you of the dispositions with 
which I went to attack my friend, and of the 

sentiments which, during the course of our 



conversation, successively took possession of 
my mind. I will now lay before you the sub- 
sequent train ofmy reflections. Mr. Cardwell, 
said I, has begun at the right end, The Rule 
of Faith. " Without faith it is impossible to 
please God. There is but one Lord, one 
Faith, one baptism." It was therefore con- 
sonant to the divine wisdom and goodness to 
give, and necessary for man to receive for his 
guidance, a Rule of Faith, which should be 
plain, competent , and secure; otherwise error 
would be harmless, because it would be in- 
evitable. Now the Protestant rule, of the 
written word alone, as interpreted by private 
judgement, is deficient in all these properties, 
and the Catholic rule of the written word as 
interpreted by the Church, is invested with 
them all. 

First, the 'Bible alone is not a. plain rule. 
Mr. Cardwell has shewn that it is not easy, 
and adapted to every capacity, but often diffi- 
cult even to the most learned. Immense mul- 
titudes cannot read at this day, and before the 
invention of printing, fewer still were able to 
read, and none but the wealthy could purchase 
a Bible. While readers and books were few, 
translations from the original Greek and He- 
brew into modern languages were less com- 
mon. Could this be a rule plain, and adapt- 
ed to all capacities, which during fourteen 
hundred years was accessible only to the 
learned and the rich? And since Reading 



and books became more common, the unlearn- 
ed daily mistake the meaning of the sacred 
books, and pervert them into wild nonsense, 
or sense more impious; and the unstable, run- 
ning into the most opposite and contradictory 
interpretations, can never agree upon the true 
sense; while it is much to be feared that both 
the learned and unstable, whose numbers are 
very great ivrest the Scriptures to their own 
destruction. 

But neither is the written word alone a 
competent rule. Some things are practised by 
all Christians, which are either unauthorized, 
or forbidden by the letter of the Scripture; 
and some things are without scruple neglect- 
ed by all, which are literally commanded by 
the Scripture. Mr. Hardman has instanced 
the observation of the Sunday, taking oaths 
on certain occasions, eating certain meats, 
neglecting certain prescribed ceremonies, re- 
taining certain descriptions of property, and 
using certain forms of compliment; and the 
still more weighty case of infant-baptism. 
Neither can the Scripture alone bear testimo- 
ny to that fundamental point of Christianity, 
the authenticity and inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures. The Bible-alone system undermines 
the Bible. It is built on fallacy. Fallacy 
runs through the whole of this system. 

But as the Bible alone is not a plain or 
competent, so neil ber is it a secure rule. The 
true sense of Scripture is a secure and intal- 



lible guide. But it is evinced by experience, 
that with the Bible before their eyes, men 
give conjectures for truths, and disagree on 
the most weighty texts: they oppose the judg- 
ment, the learning, and authority of their 
own sect, to that of all others; while all of 
them have the whole weight of the authority 
of the Catholic Church in the opposite scale. 
Where false interpretations are so easy, so 
common, and so momentous, who can pru- 
dently and safely rely on his own judgement? 

But the word of God interpreted by the 
Universal Church, is a rule of a very different 
character. It has the properties which the 
other wants. The Catholic rule is plain, 
competent, and secure. 

It is plain and easy, fitted to all capacities, 
and well adapted to the fallibility and weak- 
ness of human judgment. All could not 
read or procure Bibles; and of those who 
could, many have abused them, by grounding 
on their own misinterpretations of it, a varie- 
ty of sects and false doctrines. But all Chris- 
tians, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, can 
learn from the living voice of their pastor, by 
instructions adapted to their comprehension 
and capacity, all that is necessary for them 
to know. To readers so instructed and so 
disposed, and perhaps to them only the peru- 
sal of the Bible is very profitable. By these 
means alone, thousands in every past age, as 
well as the present, have been instructed in 



the truths and duties of religion, though they 
would neither read nor purchase a Bible; and 
it is by the same means that the most learn- 
ed are instructed in their infancy. The liv- 
ing voice of the pastor, is a rule adapted to 
persons of all ages, descriptions, and con- 
ditions. 

It is also a competent rule. It embraces 
the whole doctrine of Christ. It includes the 
written word, and the traditions of the apos- 
tles, which are not all clearly recorded in the 
Scripture. The apostles delivered the whole 
doctrine of Christ to their successors; their 
successors to the next age, and so on to the 
present time. And in point of fact, it is by 
means of the Catholic rule alone, that we 
are certain, that the Scriptures are the gen- 
uine, authentic, inspired word of God; and, in 
general, it is by this means alone that we learn 
the true sense of Scripture, and every other 
point of religion, which the written word ei- 
ther does not contain, could not contain, or, 
as in the instance of swearing, observing the 
Sunday, &lc. it appears to discountenance and 
forbid. His rule gives satisfaction to the 
conscience, where the Bible alone generates 
doubts and scruples. 

But it is in its security that the beauty, the 
excellence, and perfection of the Catholic 
Rule shine forth with brightest lustre. First 
from its nature: for it does not consist of the 
opinions of a few moderns, but of the collec- 



8 

tive and unanimous sentiments of the Pastors 
ofthe Universal Church, both in ancient and 
modern times; of a body of men exceedingly 
numerous and widely spread, whose opinions, 
prejudices, manners, and customs, are in oth- 
er matters very different, but whose sentiments 
in regard to every point of faith wonderfully, 
I had almost said miraculously, agree. Sec- 
ondly, from its mode of communication: for 
learned, virtuous, wise, and experienced, as 
this most numerous body of pastors is, they 
are suspicious of their own private opinions, 
and are diffident of their own private judg- 
ment in the weighty and awful matters of di- 
vine faith; and holding it to be deeply sinful 
to admit of any addition or retrenchment, they 
profess conscientiously to teach that faith, and 
that only, which they received from their 
forefathers, their forefathers from their 
predecessors, their predecessors from the 
apostles, the apostles from Christ. This rule, 
therefore, is the safest that can be devised, 
and gives the greatest satisfaction and secu- 
rity that can be given. To oppose one's own 
private opinion to the unanimous judgment 
of such a body of pastors, acting with such 
wisdom and caution, exceeds the rashness and 
presumption of that man, who should persist 
in his own private interpretation of the civil 
law of the land, in opposition to the unanimous 
decision ofthe twelve judges, and the unani- 
mous opinion of the whole body of lawyers. 



2 



Even if Christ had given his followers no 
commandment to hear the Church and obey 
its pastors; if he had never promised to send 
the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, to teach 
his Church all Truth; and himself to remain 
with it all days, even to the consummation of 
the world; if he had never said to the Pastors 
of this Church: " Preach the gospel to every 
creature; he that believeth, &c. shall be sav- 
ed; he that believeth not shall be condemn- 
ed;" or, as we translate it with Protestant 
emphasis, " shall be damned:" still, in this 
case, it would be the most prudent and se- 
cure way, for an humble Christian to follow 
the Catholic rule of faith, and the Catholic 
rule of interpreting the Scripture. But if 
Jesus Christ has given these commands, these 
promises, these warnings; and these gospels 
are an undeniable evidence that he has done 
this; the security of the Catholic rule, and my 
obligation to follow it, are established on the 
most solid foundation. The Bible alone may 
lead my fallible judgment astray: the divinely 
commissioned and divinely assisted Church 
of Christ never can. 

Other considerations lead me to the same 
conclusion. Christ commanded the apostles 
to preach the gospel, not to distribute Bibles. 
They converted the world by preaching, not 
by distributing Bibles. St. John, who sur- 
vived the rest of the apostles, and who put 
the finishing hand to the Bible, never gave it 



10 



as the sole rule of faith. He never addres- 
sed his disciples, who loved to flock round 
him at Ephesus, in words to this effect: " My 
dear children, besides the books of the Old 
Testament, three gospels have been compiled 
by Matthew, Mark, and Luke; a book called 
the Acts has been made public; and eighteen 
Letters have been written to certain bodies 
or individuals of the faithful, by my brothers 
Peter, Paul, James, and Jude. To these 
books I have lately added a fourth gospel, 
three epistles, and a treatise called the Apo- 
calypse. Now, as my time of abiding among 
you is short, it is essential that you should 
know, that hitherto the preaching of your 
pastors has been the rule of faith; but this is 
to be your rule no longer. Henceforth these 
books shall be the only rule of faith to you 
and all the faithful, to the end of time. They 
contain the whole will of Christ; all the doc- 
trine and tradition of the apostles. By read- 
ing them, and interpreting them according to 
your own opinion and judgment, though your 
interpretations may vary, you cannot err in 
faith. We have ordained Clement, Linus, 
Timothy, Ignatius, Polycarp, &c. to succeed 
us, and charged them to ordain other pastors 
in like manner. But though they are good and 
lawfully appointed pastors, they will be un- 
safe guides. Accordingly, they are invested 
with no interpretative authority. Read the 
Bible, and interpret it for yourselves. The 



11 

Bible, I say the Bible is henceforth the only 
religion of Christians." Had this last of the 
apostles been a Protestant, or if his disciples 
were to be Protestants after his decease, he 
ought to have spoken or written to this effect; 
and considering the greatness of the change, 
which was likely to affect every point of be- 
lief, it is reasonable to suppose that he would 
have done so. Had St. John been a Protes- 
tant, or a member of the Bible Society, he 
would have written a fourth Epistle, for the 
express purpose of conveying this most im- 
portant injunction to all future ages. But he 
gave no such injunction. Speaking in the 
capacity of a pastor of the Church, he ex- 
pressly says: " He that knoweth God, hear- 
eth us; he that is not of God, heareth not us. 
By this we know the Spirit of Truth and the 
spirit of error." (1 Epis. iv. 6.) This ac- 
cords with the spirit of all his brethren. It 
is no less clear and decisive than the com- 
mand of St. Paul: " Hold fast the form of 
sound words, which thou hast heard of me. 
Hold fast the traditions. Mark them who 
cause dissensions and offences, contrary to 
the doctrine which you have learnt, and avoid 
them." It agrees with the admonition of St. 
Peter, to beware of the rule " of private in- 
terpretation;" and with the entreaty of St. 
Jude, to follow the Catholic rule of tradition, 
and u to contend earnestly for the faith once 
delivered to the saints." 



It 

The Catholics might have argued thus, and 
Mr. Cardwell tells me they did argue thus, 
a priori j when Luther first proclaimed the 
Rule of the Bible alone, before this new rule 
had produced its natural effects on the minds 
of unlearned and unstable Protestants. But 
aided by the experience of three centuries of 
biblical experiment, we can carry the argu- 
ment much further. What the sixteenth cen- 
tury proved a priori, the eighteenth can de- 
monstrate a posteriori, from effects. Thus at 
length the Catholie principle is illustrated and 
confirmed by Protestant experiments. Faith, 
reason, and experience, now lead to the same 
conclusion, that the Bible alone is not the 
rule of faith. Mr. Cardwell has shewn, that 
none do in fact follow the Bible alone* that 
this outcry is, in some, the watchword of par- 
ty; in others, the language of insincerity; in 
others, the raving of mad fanaticism; in all, 
the cause of much fickleness, uncertainty, and 
discrepancy in faith: that it is the source of 
all that scandalous and daily increasing mul- 
tiplicity of sects, which is the reproach of the 
North of Europe, and particularly of this 
once catholic island, and that there can be no 
unity of faith, no refutation of error, no con- 
victi or schism, while every man 

has a right to form his faith according to his 
own construction of the texts of the Bible. 
To believe only our own interpretation of the 



13 

Bible, is, in other words, to believe and dis- 
believe what we please. 

Here, then, I stand on solid ground, sup- 
ported by Catholic faith on my right hand, and 
by Protestant experiments on my left. The 
tree is known by its fruits. Let us apply this 
criterion to the matter in question. The Ca- 
tholic rule has preserved, during eighteen 
centuries, and still preserves, in these latter 
ages of licentious disputation, and fearless 
innovation, that sacred unity of faith, which 
is such an imperative duty, and so evident a 
mark of divinely revealed truth. The objec- 
tions which we oppose to it, are grounded 
less upon the reason of the thing, than on our 
misconception of their doctrine, or on our own 
peculiar misconstruction of the Scripture; and 
the greater part of our abuse of that doctrine, 
moderation would spare. But the rule of 
private interpretation has produced errors 
without number, and evils beyond calculation. 
Private interpretation of the sacred, but abus- 
ed Bible! Thine are the heresies of Luther 
and Calvin, from which so many other sect* 
have sprung. Thine are the errors of Mun- 
cer, and Zuingle, ofCranmer, Cromwell, So- 
cinus, and Bayle. Thine arc the dreams of 
Mede and Swedcnburg, of Brothers, Hunt- 
ington, and Southcott, Thine are the sects 
of the philosophizing Priestley, and the en- 
thusiastic Wesley, which have so nearly emp- 
tied our parish churches, and absorbed our 



14 

establishment, leaving it no means of self-de- 
fence, without stepping back on catholic 
ground. Private interpretation! Thine are 
the lust and sacrileges of Luther, Henry, and 
Cranmer. Thine are the unholy rapacity of 
Seymour, the despotism and murders of Eli- 
zabeth, the seditions, usurpations, and de- 
thronements of succeeding reigns. Thou 
hast perverted religion, disturbed society, poi- 
soned justiee, and persecuted virtue. Thou 
mingledst the cup of malice, hatred and re- 
venge; and my unhappy country has drunk it 
to the dregs, and to the astonishment of Eu- 
rope, is still intoxicated with its bitterness! 
Are these the fruits of a good or evil tree ? The 
barrenness of the fig tree appears more tole- 
rable than such fruitfulness in evil. 

From these considerations I draw the same 
inference which Mr. Cardwell does. 

1. The Bible was not the Rule of Faith in 
the first century of the Christian Church. 

2. It was not written on the plan, nor with 
the intent, that it should, in succeeding ages, 
supersede the original rule established by 
Christ, and acted upon by all the apostles. 

3. This anticatholic rule, condemned by 
the concurring voice of Scripture and Tradi- 
tion, is a modern invention, adopted by inno- 
vators to serve their own purposes. 

4. The innovators themselves, who invent- 
ed, or adopted this new rule, never followed 
it in all things; but only so far as their own 



15 

humour, convenience, prejudice, or passion 
suggested. 

5. The effects which this rule has produc- 
ed, in the belief and practice of the enthusi- 
asts who have followed it, shew, that if it does 
good by chance, it produces evil by necessity. 

Consequently, the Bible alone, left to each 
one's private interpretation, is not by divine 
institution the sole and exclusive rule of faith; 
nor is it in practice, of itself, a plain, compe- 
tent, and secure guide, on which a prudent 
christian can venture his salvation. 

But on the contrary, these following propo- 
sitions are equally evident to my reason. 

1. The Catholic Rule of Faith was that 
which Christ instituted: a rule which the 
apostles never repealed, but which they re- 
ferred to in their ministry, and enjoined in 
their writings to the strict observance of all 
future ages. 

2. The Catholic rule is no less admirable 
in its effects, than holy in its origin, and ve- 
nerable in the continuity of its practice. 

3. The Catholic rule alone is adapted to 
the weakness and fallibility of the human un- 
derstanding. It is alone calculated to check 
pride, to encourage humility, to instruct ig- 
norance, to resist innovation, to detect here- 
sy, to refute error, and to preserve, in all 
ages and nations, the sacred and lovely unity 
of " that faith which was first delivered to the 
saints," and which the divine Author and Fi- 

7 



16 

nisher of our Faith framed with such wisdom 
and perfection, as never to require Reforma- 
tion from sinners. 

4. The apostolic antiquity, the perpetuity, 
universality, consistency, and security of the 
catholic rule, compared with the newness, 
the contracted locality, the inconsistency, and 
instability of its heterodox rival, prove to my 
satisfaction, that this catholic rule alone is 
that plain, adequate, and safe, because infal- 
lible guide, which it was consonant to the 
Divine Wisdom to ordain; and on which a 
prudent christian can with perfect confidence 
rely, for the purity and integrity of his faith. 

5. Scripture proves nothing when it is 
quoted in a wrong sense. In this manner the 
devil quoted scripture against our Saviour, 
with all the Bible pedantry of the most Me- 
thodistic Protestant. To ascertain the right 
sense of a disputed passage, it is wiser and 
better to hear the Church, than to set up my 
own private opinion, in opposition to that ve- 
nerable and competent authority. This is 
the guide that I have hitherto wanted. In 
this rule no fallacy lurks. 

6. If this church, authorized and acting in 
the manner described by Mr. Cardwell, holds 
some doctrines which are contrary to my con- 
struction of the Bible, but conformable to her 
own unvaried interpretation; or, if I judge 
that some of her tenets are not expressed in 
the Bible, but she assures me that she re- 



17 

ceived them by uninterpreted Tradition from 
the Apostles, and, moreover, shows me that 
this is a plain matter of historical fact, it is 
far more likely that she is right and I wrong, 
than that I am in the right and she in an er- 
ror/ Here it is the part of prudence and of 
virtue, for me to acquiesce in her better judg- 
ment, and not to cavil with the obstinacy of 
heresy, but to believe with the docility of 
faith. 

Gentlemen, I have now communicated to 
you the substance of our observations on the 
nature and tendency of your pamphlet. I 
have also laid before you the subsequent re- 
flections which so powerfully struck my mind 
the same evening before I retired to rest. 
Your candour will excuse the imperfections 
of my report. During the progress of these 
Letters, I have reconsidered the subject with 
mature deliberation. I have read with great 
attention the books which Mr. Cardwell re- 
commended to my perusal. I have found 
particularly convincing and decisive, Mr. 
Fletcher's Sermons on the Marks of the true 
Church, Mr. Berington's Faith of Catholics 
confirmed by Scripture, and attested by the Fa- 
thers of the five first centuries, and Bishop Hay's 
Sincere Christian instructed in the Faith of 
Christ from the written Word. To the since- 
rity of these inquiries, I have joined fervent 
prayer to God, for the assistance of his grace 
to enlighten and direct me. My research 



18 



has been successful. My prayers have been 
heard. God has blessed the labours of my 
search after the truth; because my will was 
upright, and my heart was sincere. Philip 
asked the Ethiopian who was reading the Bi- 
ble: " Understandest thou what thou read- 
est?" He answered: " How can I, except 
some one should guide mer" (Acts viii. 30.) 
I am now perfectly convinced of what I did 
not even suspect, before my winter evening 
conversation with Mr. Cardwell, that the 
wisest, as well as the simplest reader of the 
Bible, is often in the same predicament as 
the Eunuch; and equally needs the guidance 
of a Philip. It is your case at present, and 
it has been mine. I have been benighted in 
the Scriptures for want of a sure guide. I 
read my Bible, but to little purpose or, profit, 
till I was furnished with the Catholic key to 
its hidden treasures. 

I have often been delighted with the good 
sense, but, as a Protestant, puzzled with the 
practical conclusion to be drawn from the 
words of Dr. Field, formerly Dean of Glou- 
cester, and designed Bishop of Oxford, whom 
Fuller calls " that learned divine, whose me- 
mory smelleth like a field which the Lord 
hath blessed." This Protestant divine says: 
" Seeing the controversies of religion in our 
time are grown in number so many, and in 
nature so intricate, that few have time and 
leisure, fewer, strength of understanding to 



19 



examine them, what resteth for men desirous 
of satisfaction, but diligently to search out 
which, amongst all the societies of men in the 
world, is that blessed company of holy ones, 
that household of truth, that Spouse of Christ, 
and church of the living God, which is the 
pillar and ground of the Truth: that so they 
may embrace her communion, follow her direc- 
tions, and rest in her judgment? What mad- 
ness therefore, were it tor a man to tire out 
his soul and waste away his spirits, in tracing 
out all the thorny paths of the controversies 
of these days, wherein to err is no less easy 
than dangerous; and not rather to betake him- 
self to the right path of truth, whereunto God 
and nature, reason and experience, do all 
give witness? And that is, to associate himself 
to that Church, where the custody of this hea- 
venly and supernatural truth hath been by hea- 
ven itself committed ; to iveigh discreetly which 
is the true Church; and that being once found, 
to receire faithfully and obediently, without 
doubt and discussion, whatsoever she deliver- 
eth." (Treatise of the Church, Epist. Ded.) 
I am no longer puzzled, or perplexed with this 
inquiry, or the result to which it leads. It 
leads not to the reformed camp of Luther and 
his host; but to one more ancient, more au- 
thentic, better disciplined, and less suspicious. 
My choice is now decided: my faith is settled. 
JNext Sunday I will go with my friend JNlr. 
Cardwell to the Catholic Church, and will 
7* 



20 

henceforth seek the peace, comfort, and se- 
curity of truth, in the sincere profession of 
the Apostles' Creed: I believe the Holy Ca- 
tholic Church. 

That you may cease to bewilder yourself, 
and mislead others, by vain expositions of the 
Holy Bible; that you may follow, not the 
misinterpreted letter of the Bible, which kil- 
leth, but the catholic spirit of it, which giveth 
life, and that, leaving the delusive path of 
private judgment and passion, in which all 
heresiarchs have gone astray, you may have 
the glory and happiness to come to the know- 
ledge and profession of Catholic truth, shall 
be the earnest prayer of, Gentlemen, 
Your sincere well-wisher 
and Catholic friend, 

John Hardman. 



OF ANTICHRIST. 



1 . Our Adversaries endeavour to persuade 
the illiterate, that the Pope is Antichrist. It 
is easy to conjecture, what object they have 
in view in so doing. Doubtless to justify 
and excuse their desertion from the Catholic 
Faith under the pretext of a defection from 
Antichrist. 

In this chapter, therefore, we shall first 
give the sentiments of Catholics in relation 
to Antichrist. Next, we shall answer the 
quibbles, to which our Adversaries resort, 
that they might impose upon the credulity of 
the people, and affix upon the venerable Fa- 
ther of the Faithful, whom the whole Catho- 
lic world, for 1800 years, has acknowledged 
and respected as the successor of St. Peter, 
the visible Head of the Church, and Christ'a 



viceregent on earth, the vile appellation of 
the man of sin. Then we shall leave our 
readers to judge how successful they have 
been in their attempt. 

2. The name Antichrist, signifies an ene- 
my, or an adversary of Christ, and is taken 
in a twofold sense. First, generally, for every 
Adversary of Christ; such are all Heretics. 
In this sense, is understood what is said by 
the Apostle, 1 Jno. 2. 18. Even now there 
are become many Antichrists; that is, many 
Heretics, who think erroneously concerning 
Christ, and of whom it is said, They went out 
from us, but they were not of us. In the same 
sense is understood that of 1 Jno. 4. 3. 
Every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of 
God, and this is Antichrist, of whom you have 
heard that he cometh, and he is now already in 
the world. Secondly, it is taken in a particular 
sense, for the chief, or principal Adversary of 
Christ, to whom all the rest are so many pre- 
cursors. It is of him, that St. Paul speaks in 
2 Thess. 2. 3. Unless there come a revolt first, 
and the man of sin be revealed, the son of per- 
dition, who opposeth, and is lifted up above all 
that is called God. St. Augustine makes a 



23 

similar distinction. Lib. 2. contra Advers. 
legis. cap. 12. St. Damascen lib. 4. cap. 
27. Having made this distinction, we lay 
down two positions. 

3. First, Antichrist, in the special accept- 
ation of the term, as the principal enemy of 
Christ, has not as yet come into the world. 
It is proved thus. 1 . Because he will not 
come, until the Roman Empire shall have 
been overturned and desolated, as the ancient 
Fathers, both Greek and Latin, affirm in 
many parts of their writings. They confirm 
their assertion from Dan. cap. 2 & 7. Apoc. 
cap. 17. But the Roman Empire has not 
yet been overturned and desolated. There- 
fore Antichrist has not yet come. 2. Be- 
cause in the time of Antichrist, there are to 
come two witnesses, clothed in sackcloth and 
ashes. They shall prophesy a thousand hvo 
hundred and sixty days, and they shall have 
power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days 
of their prophecy, and they have power over wa- 
ters to turn them into blood. Apoc. 11. 3. 6. 
But these two witnesses have not yet come. 
"The conclusion is obvious. 

4. Secondly, that the Pope is not Anti- 



24 

christ, is evident from what is already said. 
1. Because Antichrist has not yet come, nor 
will he come, until the Roman Empire shall 
have been destroyed. But the Pope did 
come while the Roman Empire was in a 
flourishing condition. 2. Antichrist will slay 
those two Prophets, who are spoken of in the 
Apocalypse, 11. 7. This no Pope has yet 
done. To the above we add three more ar- 
guments. First, Antichrist will reign only 
three years and a half, Dan. 7. 25. A time, 
and times , and a half a time. Apocal. 11.2. 
Two and forty months, ibid. ver. 3, one thou- 
sand two hundred and sixty days. But the 
Pope has already reigned for many centuries. 
Secondly, Antichrist will be received, by the 
Jews, for the Messiah, Jno. 5. 43. and 2 
Thess. 2. 10. But no Pope was ever re- 
ceived by them for the Messiah. Thirdly, 
Antichrist will cause fire to descend from 
heaven, (Apoc. 13. 13.) But no Pope ever 
did this. 

5. Objections of our Adversaries. The 
marks of Antichrist agree with the Pope. 
The first is, to fall from the faith, 2 Thess. 
22. But the Pope, say they, has fallen from 



25 

the faith, because he defends the doctrine of 
Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, the Sacrifice 
of the Mass, and such like!!! The second is, 
to sit in the temple of God (ibid). But the 
Pope sits in the Church of Christ at Rome. 
The third is, to show himself as God (ibid). 
This the Pope does, because he exhibits and 
proclaims himself as the visible Head of the 
Church. The fourth is, to lift himself above 
all that is God (ibid). This the Pope does, 
because he raises himself above all Ecclesias- 
tical and political order. The Fifth is to deny 
Christ. 1 Jno. 2. 22. This also the Pope 
does, because he corrupts the doctrine of 
Christ the Mediator. Sixth is, to perform 
false miracles. This the Pope has done. 
Seventh is, to impress a character on his sub- 
jects. This the Pope does, when he sign* 
the foreheads of Christians, with the unction 
of Chrism, in Confirmation!!! 

We answer, that these are mere quibbles, 
and hope that our readers will not smile at 
us, for taking up the matter so seriously, as 
even to notice them. For, be it said, to the 
discredit of many Protestants both in Europe 
and in our own country, from whose good 



526 



sense we had reason to expect something 
more worthy, of this so much boasted, enlight- 
ened age, that the above are brought forward 
as weighty arguments, against the Pope.* 

* It was a source of considerable amusement to the 
catholics to behold, a few years past, the exultation, 
with which the protestant public, and particularly the 
protestant clergy, hailed the destruction, as they had 
fondly imagined, of the papal succession; and with it, of 
popery itself. The reader will remember, that, when 
the revolutionary tyrants of France had expelled the ve- 
nerable Pius VI. from his see, and consigned him to pri- 
sons, and distress, — then half the churches of this nation 
resounded with the glad text — " Rome is fallen." This, 
too, was the epitaph, which was, every where, triumph- 
antly prepared to be affixed to the mausoleum of the de- 
parted pontiff. Induced by this laughable spectacle, 
an eloquent foreign writer makes the following reflections 
on it: — 

" It has always been one of the maladies of protes- 
tantism, to predict the fall of popery, and the subversion 
of the papal power. Not errors the most absurd; not 
mistakes the most glaring ; not nonsense the most laugh- 
able, could ever correct its professors of this folly. They 
have still constantly returned to the charge. And never 
were these prophets so bold in predicting this awful re- 
volution, as when, recently, they imagined, it had actu- 
ally arrived. 



27 

First, to defend the doctrine of Purgatory, 
the Invocation of Saints, and the Sacrifice of 
the Mass, is not to fall from the Faith, be- 
cause such is the Doctrine, which has been 
believed and taught at all times, from the 
first establishment of Christianity down to 
the present, in proof of which we have only 
to refer to the writings of the Holy Fathers 
and Ecclesiastical historians of every age, 
who are all unanimous on this subject. May 

" In this career of madness, there are no classes of men, 
that have distinguished themselves so strikingly, as the 
Protestant clergy. These men have published a count- 
less multitude of the most useful works, — useful, because 
they are the disgrace of the human understanding; and 
must compel men, — if they are not condemned to total 
blindness, — to enter into themselves. At the sight of 
the sovereign pontiff, driven, a few years ago, into exile, 
imprisoned, insulted, and deprived of his territories, — it 
was easy for these prophets to foretel, that, now, it was 
all over with his spiritual supremacy, and his temporal 
power. Plunged in the deepest darkness, and condemn- 
ed with justice to the two-fold chastisement of seeing in 
the Scriptures, what is not there; and of not seeing, what 
they contain most clearly; — they undertook, by the help 
of these sacred pages, to prove to u*, that his suprema- 
cy, — which we arc divinely, and literally, assured, shall 



» 

we not rather say, that our Adversaries have 
fallen from the faith, who oppose this doc- 
trine ? Secondly, It is one thing, to sit in the 
temple of God at Jerusalem, and another, to 
sit in the Church of Christ at Rome. Anti- 
christ will sit in the temple of Jerusalem, and 
be adored by the Jews. The Pope sits in 
the Church of Christ at Rome, which our 
Adversaries have deserted. Thirdly, to ex- 
hibit himself as the visible Head of the 

endure for ever, — was on the point of vanishing for ever. 
Nay; they even found out the very hour, and minute, of 
its fall. They found out this in the apocalypse, — a 
book, fatal to protectant writers: and in which they ne- 
ver engage, without losing their common sense. Against 
sophisms, the most preposterous, the catholic has no 
other arms to present, but those of reason. But God, 
when Ins wisdom requires it, refutes them by wonders. 
For, behold, whilst these false prophets were yet speak- 
ing with all this confidence; and the public, as if drunk 
with error, were listening eagerly to them, — the Al- 
mighty, by a striking attestation of his power, and by an 
inexplicable reconciliation of states the most discordant, 
sent back the venerable pontiff to the Vatican; — where 
his hand, extended only to bless, already called down 
mercy, and the light of heaven, upon the authors of 
these pitiful productiu 



29 



Church, is not the same, as to set himself up 
for God. St. Peter exhibited himself in the 
former manner: but Antichrist will exhibit 
himself in the latter. Fourthly, even Moses 
was above all Ecclesiastical and political or- 
der, and yet did not lift himself above God. 
Fifthly, Our Adversaries have not yet been 
able to prove that the Pope has corrupted 
the doctrine of Christ the Mediator. Nay, 
they themselves have corrupted the doctrine 
of Christ, as we have already shown. Sixth- 
ly, it is not the Pope, but God, who performs 
miracles. Our Adversaries are bound to 
shoAV, that the Pope has performed those mi- 
racles, which Scripture says, Antichrist will 
work; of this kind are the two following. 1. 
To draw down fire from heaven. 2. To cause 
the image of the beast to speak. Apoc. 13. 13. 
We do not read, that the Pope has yet done 
either. Seventhly, the character of Antichrist, 
should have three qualifications. 1. That it 
should be common to all, great and small, 
rich and poor, freemen and slaves. 2. That 
it should be impressed on the forehead, or on 
the right hand. 3. That no man should buy 
or sell, unless he have this character. Apoc. 



30 

13. 16. and chap. 14. But these conditions 
do not agree with the unction of Chrism. 
Therefore these objections of our Adversaries 
are fruitless, and of no weight whatever. 



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